Who says that having multiple wireless carriers forces network operators to compete on price? Canada's top three mobile operators, Rogers, Telus, and Bell Mobility, have all raised prices for certain plans by an identical amount over a short period of time.

CBC News reported this week:

Canada’s big three wireless carriers have hiked the base prices for new plans by $5 in most markets over the past two months. Rogers, Telus, and Bell Mobility now all charge $80 per month for new smartphone plans with a new contract, $5 more than what many of those same plans cost when they were introduced last year. The prices for other smartphone plans with more data cost upwards of $145. The price hikes affect every province except Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The $80 a month plan includes 500MB of data, unlimited nationwide calling, unlimited messaging, voicemail and call display. Existing plans are unaffected.

Starting prices are lower for plans that don't have unlimited voice, but they are still the same across the three carriers. Bell charges $50 a month for 150 minutes, 200MB of data, and unlimited texting; and $60 a month for 1,000 minutes, 500MB of data, and unlimited texting. Rogers offers the same exact plans and pricing, and Telus does as well. Those prices remained unchanged.

The price increases this year and identical prices in the unchanged plans could be a classic case of price signaling, in which carriers don't collude to keep prices high but nonetheless follow each other's lead. Marketing and management consultant Rags Srinivasan, writing in GigaOm in July 2012, noted similar activity from Verizon Wireless and AT&T. "Price signaling has always existed between the number one and number two players in any market," he wrote. "Agreeing to not engage in a price war is truly a win-win for the market leaders. Since outright price fixing is illegal, market leaders resorted to signaling to tell the other company their intentions or send a threat about their cost advantages."

Rogers spokesperson Jennifer Kett today denied any such maneuvering. She noted that Telus raised its prices in January, well before Rogers and Bell made the same move. Bell was reportedly the last of the three to change its prices. Kett's statement to Ars said:

Pricing decisions are made completely independently and any suggestion otherwise is absolutely false. We regularly adjust our plans and pricing to reflect changes in how customers are using their devices and changes in the services and features we offer to customers. On Thursday of last week we made changes to some of our wireless plans and prices. Not all plans were changed—many of our plans including our talk and text plans, our Smart Picks plans and our popular 1GB Share Everything plan remain at the same price. Our Smart picks at plans still start at $60/month for 500MB of data. With respect to our recent changes, the needs of our customers are shifting and they’re using more data than ever before. The majority of our customers use between 1GB and 2GB of data per month. That’s why we did not change the price of our popular 1GB plan ($85/month) and why we introduced a new 2GB plan for only $5 more. We’ve also added an extra 1GB of data to our 3GB plan for only $5 more, which is a great new option for couples or families sharing data between users. All our plans are shareable and allow customers to add an additional device for as little as $10 per month.

Telus spokesperson Donna Ramirez noted that while the company "increased our SharePlus plan rates by $5 in January... last week we actually dropped the rate of our most popular data buckets (500MB and 1GB) by $5, so the cost of getting a SharePlus plan with a data bucket is essentially the same now as when we launched SharePlus last summer. Based on customer demand last week, we also introduced two new data buckets—a $30 2GB data plan and a $50 4GB data bucket."

Still, Telus's unlimited voice and text plan with 500MB of data is $80 a month after all the recent price changes, just like Rogers and Bell.

We also contacted Bell this morning but haven't heard back yet. Bell did not respond to CBC, either.

Rogers and Telus both pointed out that CBC was forced to correct its story because it initially claimed that Telus, Bell, and Rogers all raised their rates on the same weekend. In fact, as CBC's updated story says, the increases happened over the course of two months.

CBC also wrote that "[t]he three companies came under fire by the federal government last year, which is pushing for a fourth wireless competitor in all four markets."

The US has four major nationwide carriers, of course, but that could drop to three if Sprint is able to buy T-Mobile. Although T-Mobile has made aggressive moves to lure customers away from its bigger rivals, including paying off early termination fees, the company two weeks ago raised the price of its unlimited plan by $10 to $80 a month. On the plus side, T-Mobile doubled the unlimited smartphone data plan's tethering allowance from 2.5GB to 5GB.

While the Canadian government wants four major carriers, the CEO of Sprint owner SoftBank says dropping to three carriers is the proper solution for the US market. SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son, arguing on behalf of a Sprint purchase of T-Mobile, vowed that the extra scale provided by a merger will allow him to start a "massive price war."