Mark Evans writes about Rogers' and Bell's plans to reduce bundling discounts.  He attributes this to the lack of a need to offer these incentives, as there is the so-called "convenience" factor of dealing with just one service providers.  Granted that the Canadian consumer might not be as cost-conscious as other nations' consumers around the world, and in fact, convenience does play a role in choosing more than one service from the same provider.  But I would be willing to bet that the other half of the story is the lack of a perfect (or as perfect as it gets) competitive market in the Canadian telecom landscape.  The reason for that is manifold - in the wireless side, for instance, contraction was to blame (once Rogers took out the market disruptor - Fido - "price discipline" came back), on top of the lack of action by the CRTC vis-a-vis wireless local number portability.  On the cable side, the DBS players (Bell Canada and Shaw) have not really given the Canadian MSOs (Rogers, Shaw, Videotron, Cogeco, etc.) a run for their money.  Not that I expected Shaw to cannibalize its own cable revenues, but at least ExpressVu could have made things interesting here in Ontario.  But the last salvo was the CRTC VoIP decision, which really took out any chance of any significant price cuts for local service.  So is there really any surprise not to see any bundling discount?  There is no major incentive, as "price discipline" rules and maximizes profits for these companies.  Only when we have a more competitive system in place will bundling discounts come into play.   more »