Rogers, Bell and Quebecor Commissioned a Report. It Says They’re Having a Hard Time.

Canada’s telecom sector says it made a big difference to the economy in 2025, contributing $86 billion to the country’s GDP, according to a new PwC Canada report. That works out to roughly 4% of Canada’s total economic output, with the industry supporting 611,000 jobs across the country.

The report, funded by the Canadian Telecommunications Association (CTA), breaks down where that $86 billion actually came from. About $27.3 billion was generated directly by the telecoms themselves through corporate output, wages, and supply chain activity. The remaining $58.7 billion rippled out across other industries that depend on connectivity, with finance and utilities leading the pack at $5.2 billion each, followed by professional services at $4.6 billion and wholesale trade at $3.9 billion.

Rogers, Bell, Videotron, SaskTel, Nokia, Ericsson, Beanfield, Cogeco, Eastlink, Tbaytel, and Xplore are members of the CTA (Telus withdrew from the industry group in2014).

“Canada’s telecommunications networks are not just consumer services: they are critical infrastructure that underpin our economy, public safety, national resilience and digital sovereignty,” said Robert Ghiz, President and CEO of the Canadian Telecommunications Association, in a statement on Wednesday. “This report makes clear that the outcomes we want for Canadians–affordability, connectivity, innovation and economic growth–require sustained private sector investment in network infrastructure. However, as demand for AI, cloud computing and next-generation digital services accelerates, a deteriorating investment environment threatens the resilience and advancement of critical telecom infrastructure that Canadians and the broader economy depend on.”

The rosier numbers come with a catch though. Capital spending on network infrastructure has been steadily sliding, dropping from a peak of $12.7 billion in 2023 down to $10.9 billion in 2025. The report pins a big part of the blame on regulatory costs. In 2024 alone, Canadian telecoms paid around $2.5 billion in government fees, regulatory assessments, and corporate taxes. According to the report, “in aggregate, these obligations were equivalent to 58% of operators’ net income in 2024, up from 54% the prior year.”

Canada’s 5G spectrum costs are also way out of step with the rest of the world, says the report. Canadian carriers paid an average of $2.26 per MHz-pop for mid-band 5G spectrum at auction. American carriers paid $1.18 for the same thing. Operators in Australia and the UK paid just $0.27 and $0.17 respectively.

In October 2027, Ottawa plans to launch its mmWave 5G spectrum auction and it has limits in place to prevent incumbents from hoarding all the spectrum.

On top of those upfront auction costs, the report notes that “Canadian wireless providers are also subject to ongoing annual spectrum fees that increase the cost of delivering services and divert resources away from expanding and enhancing communications network infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, consumer wireless prices have dropped 45.5% between January 2020 and February 2026, which sounds great for customers but means carriers are bringing in less revenue per subscriber while regulatory costs keep climbing, says the report. PwC warns that if nothing changes, the ongoing drop in capital investment will slow down future network upgrades and make it harder to expand service in rural areas.

Again, the report was funded by the telecoms themselves, which is a bit like asking someone to write their own performance review.