How three companies came to own most of Canadian internet
The prices make more sense once you see who owns the pipes.
Open with the number that explains most of the others: in 2023, Bell, Rogers, and Telus together brought in 89.5% of Canadian telecom revenue.
Not most of it. Almost nine dollars in every ten. Add the fixed-internet view and the picture holds: the incumbent phone and cable carriers held 87.3% of revenues and 88.2% of subscribers. Canada's big three telecom companies, with the regional incumbents beside them, do not merely lead this market. They are the market, and once you see how that came to be, the prices on your bill stop being mysterious.
- Bell, Rogers, and Telus took 89.5% of Canadian telecom revenue in 2023, per the Competition Bureau; incumbent carriers held 88.2% of fixed-internet subscribers.
- The latest broadband subscriber shares among the majors: Rogers 31.2%, BCE 31.0%, Telus 19.2%, Videotron 12.1%, Cogeco 6.4%.
- Last-mile networks are natural monopolies, so concentration was always likely; acquisitions finished the job.
- The Bell-MTS case is the documented warning: Manitoba prices were substantially lower with a strong regional competitor, and rose after the acquisition.
- What pushes back: regulated wholesale access, regional challengers, and, newly, demand organised to bargain collectively.
The two-layer market, and why it concentrates
Underneath every Canadian internet brand is a physical last mile, the cable or fibre actually reaching each home, and last miles are natural monopolies. Building one network to a street is expensive; building two is wasteful; building three is absurd. So the companies that built them, the phone incumbents and the cable companies, ended up owning the ground floor of the market, and everyone else, by regulation, rents it from them at wholesale rates. Concentration was not a conspiracy. It is the default physics of infrastructure, which is exactly why every comparable country regulates it.
How the big three telecom companies got here
Ownership of the pipes was the foundation; acquisitions built the tower. Rogers absorbed Shaw in 2023, uniting the two dominant cable networks and making the combined company the country's largest fixed-broadband provider. Bell had already taken Manitoba's MTS in 2017 for $3.9 billion, and later bought up independents including Distributel and EBOX. Telus acquired Start.ca and Altima; Quebecor took VMedia; Cogeco took Oxio. Each deal was individually explicable. Collectively, they moved the market's remaining alternatives under incumbent roofs: the independents' share fell from roughly 10% in 2019 to about 6% by 2023, and the subscriber map settled into today's shape, Rogers at 31.2%, BCE at 31.0%, Telus at 19.2% of broadband among the majors.
The prices are structural. So is the fix.
What concentration does to your bill: the Manitoba case
The clearest evidence is a natural experiment Canada ran on itself. Before 2017, Manitoba had a strong regional carrier in MTS, and the Competition Bureau found prices there were substantially lower than in the rest of the country. Bell acquired MTS, the regional counterweight disappeared, and prices rose toward the national norm. The same pattern shows in reverse wherever a real regional competitor persists: Quebec, with Videotron pressing the national carriers, is consistently the cheapest big-carrier market in the country. Competition is not an abstraction in this industry. It is visible, province by province, on the bill.
| Company | ('n', 'Broadband subscriber share, Q3 2025') |
|---|---|
| Rogers | 31.2% |
| BCE (Bell) | 31.0% |
| Telus | 19.2% |
| Videotron | 12.1% |
| Cogeco | 6.4% |
| Big three share of 2023 telecom revenue | 89.5% |
What actually pushes back
Three forces genuinely discipline this market. Regulation: the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission)'s wholesale framework forces network owners to sell access to rivals, which is the entire reason a same-line independent can undercut the flagship price. Regional champions: where a Videotron or a SaskTel holds real share, national pricing bends around it. And, the newest lever, organised demand: households pooled by region and renewal window, making providers compete openly for the group instead of pricing against individual inertia. The first two are institutional and slow. The third is the one households can build themselves, which is precisely what Whollar is being constructed to run. You cannot out-argue a natural monopoly one phone call at a time. Aggregated demand is the counterweight that fits the structure.
The structure is the problem. Structure is also the answer.
One household negotiates against 89.5%. A cohort negotiates as a block that providers must win. The first regional cohorts are forming now; joining is free, and you are never obligated to accept a bid.
Free for households · nothing to buy today · you only act if a bid comes back that you want.
Frequently asked questions
Why is Canadian internet so expensive?
Mostly structure. Last-mile networks are natural monopolies, ownership of them is highly concentrated, and where a strong regional competitor is absent, regular rates hold high against consumer inertia. The pattern is visible geographically: Quebec, with real regional competition, is the cheapest big-carrier market, while the North, with almost none, is the most expensive.
Is Canadian internet a monopoly?
Not literally: it is a concentrated oligopoly. Bell, Rogers, and Telus took 89.5% of telecom revenue in 2023, and incumbent carriers held 88.2% of fixed-internet subscribers, with regulated wholesale access keeping a small independent sector alive on their networks. The competitive pressure that exists is real but thin, which is what the numbers describe.
Did prices actually rise after the big mergers?
The best-documented case is Bell's 2017 acquisition of MTS. The Competition Bureau found Manitoba prices had been substantially lower with MTS as a strong regional competitor, and they rose after the deal. It is the clearest Canadian evidence that the number of real competitors in a region shows up directly on household bills.
What would actually lower prices?
The forces with a track record: enforced wholesale access so independents can compete on the incumbents' lines, healthy regional champions like Videotron whose presence measurably bends national pricing, and organised demand. That last one, households bargaining as groups rather than individuals, is the newest lever, and it is the one Whollar exists to build.