Living in Canada, or more importantly the capital of Canada (No, not Toronto; Ottawa!!) I am ashamed at the quality of content providers we have. Having only experienced services on in Ontario and Quebec, I cannot speak for the whole country, but I've heard the that the same problem persists across the whole nation.

Quality Of Content: Or the lack there of. Maybe to the average consumer, it maybe enough, but to a tech-savvy person, the services and plans provided are just atrocious. I know Canada is seen as the baby brother to the United States, although at the moment, that baby brother has a stronger dollar. Thus, everything that happens in the US or across the pond in Europe, slowly trickles across the boarder. Sometimes, very slowly. Example: iPhone, 3G, the number of HD channels, better broadband speeds. Not to mention the sky high prices that we Canadians pay.

Where I live, we primarily have 2 main competitors. Bell and Rogers. I currently have 3 services with Rogers - Wireless, Broadband Internet and TV. I would switch to Bell if I could, but the DSL provided by Bell, only reaches the 2nd floor of my apartment building, not my apartment on the 4th floor - hmm OK!. I am also not allowed any satellite dishes on my balcony, so Bell looses another service (also I am facing North - the opposite direction to where a satellite should face). At the time (almost 2 years ago) when I signed my life away to a wireless contract with Rogers, they were the only provider to give me a decent plan, and had decently cool phones.

Why my gripe with Rogers? Well since they have monopolized market for people like me, they can charge a premium, and get away with it. My monthly bill for all three services comes to about $150 CAD. I compared my exact plans to a couple of providers in the US, and I would pay no more than $70-$90 USD. We are comparing apples to apples, because the USD is on par with the CAD.

Currently I am trying to look to add a data plan to my current wireless plan. After spending about 15-20 minutes on the Rogers Website (no I will not link to them), I finally found something; just enough to make me reconsider my initial though of adding the data plan. The price $5/month for 5mb or $10/month for 10mb. Ridiculous!

While surfing around on the site all I found was Rogers trying to sell me new services, new plans, and upgrades to my existing plans. NO!! I just wanted to add ONE VAS (value added service). But I guess that's too much to ask.