Cell-phone only homes continue to climb

Alberta and British Columbia continue to lead the way in wireless-only households, according to recently released figures from Statistics Canada. Nationally, wireless-only homes increased from 5.1% at the end of 2006 to 6.4% in December 2007. The country's most western province now counts more than 10% of homes as only using a cell phone for their residential telephony communications service. This is up significantly from a year early when only 6% of BC households were considered wireless only. Alberta ranks second in cell phone-only homes with 7.7%, a slight decline from the 2006 level of 8.1%. As a whole, there are more than 19.9 million wireless subscribers in Canada with the industry adding more than 1.6 million in 2007. Manitoba and BC saw the biggest jump in wireless additions, according to the StatsCan figures. The number of households that added cell phone service in Manitoba jumped 8.7% in 2007 to top 71.4%. BC increased its household penetration of wireless by almost 7% to hit 76.2%. The number of households that have cell phone service in addition to traditional landline continues to be led by the two western provinces. Alberta registered highest with 83.5% of homes with a cell phone, up from 80.4% at the end of 2006. BC's wireless penetration level of 76.2% was up considerably from 69.3%. The total number of wireless subscribers will have almost certainly passed 20 million by the end of the first quarter by approximately 200,000 new net additions. The wireless carriers release their Q1 results over the next couple of weeks. Report on Wireless will have follow-up analysis of their results. Table: Provincial comparisons of household wireless penetration and cell phone-only penetration Province Cell phone penetration (%) (2006) Cell phone penetration (%) (2007) Cell phone-only penetration (%) (2006) Cell phone-only penetration (%) (2007) Newfoundland and Labrador 62 66.2 3.3 3.9 Prince Edward Island 64.7 67.8 4.7 5.4 Nova Scotia 63.9 70 3.4 5.2 New Brunswick 57.7 65.2 3.7 4.2 Quebec 58 63.2 5.1 6.3 Ontario 70.6 75.1 4.4 5.3 Manitoba 62.7 71.4 5.4 6.9 Saskatchewan 68.3 73.6 2.9 4.0 Alberta 80.4 83.5 8.1 7.7 British Columbia 69.3 76.2 6.0 10.2 Canada 67.1 72.4 5.1 6.4 Source: Statistics Canada, The Daily, April 23, 2008

Cell-phone only homes continue to climb

News | April 24, 2008

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us