Telus refuses to lower prices despite challenging competition on the horizon

Rogers has created Chatr, and Bell has stated its Solo Mobile subsidary will be shifting down market.

Chatr and Solo will be locking their crosshairs onto targets Wind Mobile, and Moblicity, market newbies whose customer demographic is value-conscious cellphone consumers.

Despite this drastic down-market change, Telus isn’t budging.

“Sometimes, in our view, it makes sense to be expeditiously reactive; other times it makes sense to keep your powder dry,” Darren Entwhistle, chief executive officer of the increasingly notorious Telus is quoted as saying in The Province.

Telus is taking Darren’s latter view, clearly, in part because the company harbours fears over regulatory obstacles that constrict it. This means that Koodo, Telus’s little guy, won’t be seeing price cuts. But Bell, on the other hand, has decided to be “expeditiously reactive,” as Darren puts it: George Cope, CEO of Bell, said “We will defend our third of the prepaid market,” during the company’s latest earnings call, referring to Solo Mobile and implying price reductions to remain on par with Chatr, Wind, and Moblicity.

Darren says he’s “satisfied right now with Telus’s status quo.” And I suppose he ought be: Net income, earnings per share, and revenue are all up for Telus from a year ago. But it would be nice if Telus dropped prices: then we wouldn’t have to worry about being broke deadbeats.