I wonder how many of them would actually buy them though. There's been attempts at mobile providers, sometimes offering prices that the big telcos won't try to match even to flood them out, and they tend to wither away.
Very few of them have offered decent service at good prices. Usually outside of ~5 major metros you have effectively no coverage and speeds are often subpar compared to the incumbents.
Mobile providers have to make huge investments in infrastructure to provide reasonable coverage in Canada. It happens on a small scale but it's like an entirely different market from the main players.
Now I have little doubt that if foreign providers were allowed in Canada that Verizon or AT&T would be able to setup reasonable competition in short order.
This happened: Wind Mobile. They couldn't immediately build infrastructure across the entire country, so IIRC you were "roaming" outside a few major urban centers. However, I believe they also had unlimited US roaming (much better than the big three).
I expected more uptake since it would have been a better deal for most Canadians in those urban centers, but I think there's a subtle bias against taking these kinds of risks.
The Egyptian billionaire CEO had some choice words about the Canadian business climate as he was in the process of divesting of wind mobile: https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1013522
They never really expanded close to enough. People didn't want to be roaming when they went to the cottage or camping or whatever and even then the urban areas served were still too concentrated and small.
I think had they focused on southern Ontario or BC and expanded from there rather than aiming to hit the all the big metros first they might have done better.
Decisions are made at the margins. It’s always possible to look back and say “they should have done X, and they would have succeed.” It possible that there were many factors, but in my mind no minor change to the strategy would have helped. Had they done what you suggest, I’m sure the respond would have been that they targeted too small a market, or they didn’t cater to folks traveling between major cities frequently.
IIRC Wind was offering unlimited plans at 50% the price of a mediocre plan on major providers. You could have hours of roaming calls and still come out ahead (and this is in the edge case, where you happen to go camping that month). Most things being equal, Canadians broadly prefer to pay more to have a sure thing. It’s not a bad instinct, but it has consequences to how industry is shaped in the long term.
Most of the smaller providers have either been acquired (e.g. Public Mobile) or downright always been run by the larger telcos (e.g. Virgin Mobile). For both mobile and ISPs, very few companies actually own the infrastructure, most are just leasing bandwidth.
And since you can't count on them to stick around, it's not worth it for many of us to go through the hassle of switching only to have to switch again a year or three later when the company goes under. Plus the risk of poor service compared to the known mediocre service you get from the major telcos.
The poor service often has to do with the fact they don't own the infrastructure, and rely on the parent's technicians. I'd be genuinely surprised if those service calls were put on the same level of priority as their own customers.
