Our high mobile connectivity prices and, until recently, inability to retain mobile phone numbers were bound to catch up with us. Turns out that other first world countries have been beefing up their communications and information technology sectors by making them more ubiquitous while Canada's market Neros fiddled. The result: this year Canada dropped five places from 6th in the world to 11th in the World Economic Forum's yearly ICT rankings.

1. Denmark 2. Sweden 3. Singapore 4. Finland 5. Switzerland 6. Netherlands 7. US 8. Iceland

9. UK 10.Norway 11.Canada 12.Hong Kong SAR 13.Taiwan, China 14.Japan 15.Australia >>Rankings in full

According to the WEF they used:

The Report uses the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) to measure the degree of preparation of a nation or community to participate in and benefit from ICT developments. The NRI is composed of three component indexes which assess: - environment for ICT offered by a country or community - readiness of the community's key stakeholders - usage of ICT among these stakeholders.

You do not have to possess a crystal ball to see Canada's future if our current system continues unaltered. Next year we could be in the mid teens and may fall too far behind to be globally competitive. We live in a networked world. Business is done on an instantaneous, global level. If we lack the infrastructure and adoption of our global competitors then there will be more than a few obsolete car manufacturing plants closing in the next few years.

We have to stop propping up telcos who refuse to be globally competitive while, at the same time, demand regulatory protection of their collapsing markets.