New Survey: Canadians Do Not Want Foreign or Canadian Companies Favoured in Upcoming Wireless Auction

OTTAWA, Aug. 21, 2013 /CNW Telbec/ - A clear majority of Canadians (81%) preferred that neither foreign‐nor Canadian‐owned telecommunications companies are favoured in the upcoming government auction of the airwaves used by wireless phone companies according to the results of a survey conducted by Nanos Research on behalf of Bell Canada and TELUS.

If the government were to create an advantage in the marketplace in any industry, respondents prefer that the government favour Canadian (70%) over foreign‐owned companies. Only 2% prefer that foreign‐owned companies be given an advantage.

Respondents are clearly more likely to think that Canadian companies would do a better job at creating jobs, investing and providing rural service compared to foreign companies by a margin of about seven to one.

Although price is an important aspect of their wireless service, Canadians clearly believe that lowering wireless service prices is not as important (7 percent) a government priority as lowering gas prices (45 percent) or college/university tuition (33 percent) as a government priority.

This study of Canadians was commissioned by Bell Canada and TELUS and was comprised of a random telephone survey of 2,000 Canadians conducted between August 12th and 19th, Participants were randomly recruited by telephone. The sample included both land and cell‐lines across Canada. The results were statistically checked and weighted geographically and by age using the latest Census data. Geographic oversamples were created to allow for more robust regional analysis.

The margin of error for a random survey of 2,000 Canadians is ±2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

For the full results including the statistics for all of the questions please visit www.nanosresearch.com. All reporting should refer to this as a Nanos Survey commissioned by Bell Canada and TELUS.

SOURCE: Nanos Research Group