Canada's cellular rates are high because we have a relatively small population, spread out over a lot of land; so coverage means lots of towers..
but also: land infrastructure was established here long ago, and so competes with and therefore slows roll-out of cellular.

Combine this with: companies that laid fibre are having trouble recouping the cost. BCE privatization awaits proof that it is solvent. Well, what if it isn't?

If I have a contract for bandwidth that stipulates service guarantees no matter what traffic I carry, that contract had better be honoured by the provider, or it's in breach.

Monopolies seem to want to dictate that they can make unilateral service changes to such contracts. It's Hobson's choice, ie: take it or leave it; I have no choice if there is no other provider. This, then enables a monopoly to exert unfairness -- which it seems to believe is necessary because it still has to make payments on that expensive infrastructure roll-out.

So, what's economically viable in the great white north? It wasn't designed to be a digital ghetto, we just have to come up with solutions.

One vital and ignored aspect of the economic design of our industrial system is that those who have monopolistic, or oligarchic, access rights make the greatest profits when they use up, as fast as possible, any resource in short supply (e.g. ore, oil) and to choke off and limit as much as possible any resource in infinite supply (e.g. human creativity, imagination, information). Hence the continuously-increasing "intellectual proprty" restrictions that kill art and literature, all of which is derivative; the throttling of unpaid-for internet content (free information and unfettered inspiration) and, as a corollary, spiraling phone fees. Even land-lines now charge 'system access fees' and for other "extras" like being able to call emergency services and touch-tone dialing. The nickel-and-dime charges more than double the nominal fees for every phone.
Government almost always sides with big players, and 'twas ever thus. So please do not be surprised at the continuous attempts to push monstrous copyright restrictions through legislature and the many CRTC decisions.
Even the most honest discussion gets skewed when 90% of presentations are by bogus organizations set up by the big three telecommunications giants to overwhelm the legitimate objections of fewer, underfunded, genuine citizens groups.

paul shield:

Remember the System Access Fee?

That little beauty (dropped by the government a decade ago but still charged by most carriers) was established to build that large network of towers. All the the carriers pay for now are the maintenance and land usage fees for the towers, a reasonable operating cost and peanuts compared to the profits brought in by bloated fees.

The cellular companies are equivalent to the banks...posting billions in profits each year but still overcharging their customers.

"Becoming" a digital ghetto? I would suggest that it IS already a digital ghetto. Right now the fact is that Canada is a technologically backwards nation, whose digital policies have isolated itself from the rest of the world. The only reason why we get any new technology is because we're so close to the US - and even so, we don't know how to use the technology that is given to us.

Though it may be true that Canada adopts technology at a considerably slower pace than our counterparts down south, I hardly think it appropriate to label ourselves a ghetto nation in respects to technology (or one that is slowly becoming a tech-ghetto). Canada is still one of the most internet- (and computer-) savvy countries in the world.

In response to the three things that suck about "being Canadian right now" I would say:

1. Though Bell, Rogers, and Shaw continue to throttle internet connections, Telus has always kept an open policy to the way in which they control the internet: no ISP compression and no throttling regardless of peak usage.
2. That Apple and Amazon have expressed plans to eventually remove DRM from their music offerings renders Bill C-61 moot. It has also becoming increasingly unnecessary in this technological age, for music, movie and tv-lovers to actually download any content whatsoever. Sites like Grooveshark, Last.fm, Pandora, and Favtape make it unnecessary for anyone to upkeep their own collection when whole playlists can be generated, shared, and transported freely.
3. There may be no equivalent alternative to twitter but there is a freely available method to send free SMS messages to cell phones. The process involves sending texts from one's email address to specific phone numbers. Each carrier has this system in place. For example, to send a text message to a fido customer, simply send an email to the address: xxxxxxxxxx@fido.ca (where the 10 digit number of the recipient would precede the "@" sign.

Lastly, it is possible to stream content from US-exclusive sites such as Hulu or ABC by way of VPN software called Hotspot Shield. The free download allows anyone in Canada (or any other country) to adopt a US IP address to cloak their current location, allowing them to enjoy that content as if they were within the US. For more info on how that works simply google "hotspot shield troubleshooting blog".