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This article appears in the May edition of the Financial Post Magazine. Visit the iTunes store to download the iPad edition of this month’s issue.

It’s flashing in the darkness of your purse. Nestled into a pocket just under the table at dinner or resting on your beside table ready to sound an alarm or indulge your insomnia at 3 a.m. It’s dictating driving directions from a dock on your dashboard or perched on your bathroom sink waiting for you to get out of the shower.

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Our smartphones are literally everywhere we are, a personal connection that helps explain our national obsession with the industry that sells us wireless devices and services. It’s a love/hate sort of affair though: The desire to consume and connect set off by a fiery loathing of the companies at the helm of the industry.

Several major Canadian industries are dominated by just a handful of major players — consider air travel, groceries and credit cards — but Ottawa has made it a special priority to bring competition to the cellphone sector. Complaints about consumer businesses are not uncommon, yet dissatisfaction with wireless services and prices and the conviction that things could somehow be better are at a level unto their own.