A retired Canadian business executive has started a petition asking the CRTC and the federal government to set enforceable customer service standards for telecoms, including a hard cap on how long you can be left on hold.
Frank Brown, former president of Wahl Canada, launched the Change.org petition after hitting his limit with his own provider, he explained to iPhone in Canada in an email. He waited 45 minutes on hold for a basic request, got transferred, and was immediately disconnected. On another try, the automated system would not even put him in the queue, telling him there were too many calls and to phone back later.
Anyone who has spent an afternoon fighting on the phone with incumbents such as Rogers, Bell, or Telus will recognize the pattern. Reddit threads about hour-long waits (or more) are a regular occurrence. Brown’s argument is that Canadians already pay some of the highest wireless and internet prices in the world, and getting a human on the line for a billing question or an account change should not be this hard.
His fix is a mandatory 10-minute maximum hold time for every telecom operating in Canada, backed by financial penalties for companies that miss it.
He points to Spain as the model, as the nation’s Congress passed a customer service law in December 2025 requiring companies in essential sectors, telecoms included, to answer 95 per cent of calls within three minutes. It also gives customers the right to reach a real person instead of being stuck in an automated loop, and fines for non-compliance run from €150 to €100,000 ($240 to $160,000 CAD). Spain has given companies one year to comply, so it is phasing in through 2026.
You can click here to sign the petition on Change.org. We know these types of petitions might not bring real change, but the hope is to bring light to the issue. The CRTC has already tried to limit how telecoms can charge junk fees. But big telcos already have come up with other fees to replace banned fees, and it seems the Commission can only do so much to control incumbents.
How long have you been on hold with telecoms lately while on the phone?
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