Canada's subpar cell-phone service.(SPECIAL REPORT)

THE NEWS ISN'T GOOD from some 18,000 Canadian readers who responded to our first survey of their cell-phone service. On a score of 1 co 100, average satisfaction was a fairly low 66, making cell-phone service in Canada one of the lower-rated services we've covered.

As in the U.S. survey covered on page 28of the magazine, the biggest complaint was the cost of cellphone service, with more than 25 percent of subscribers to most services citing it as their top issue. The exception was the carrier that received among the highest scores in overall satisfaction: Virgin Mobile, which specializes in prepaid service.

Virgin and SaskTel, which provides regular service to Saskatthewanians, also received the highest marks across the board for customer service.

Overall satisfaction with SaskTel was on a par with Virgin and well above that of the other providers. Overall satisfaction for the three major providers--Telus Mobility, Rogers Wireless, and Bell Mobility--was not meaningfully different. Telus got better scores on some aspects of customer service, and Bell had the highest proportion of subscribers, 43 percent, who said they were considering switching carriers.

While we weren't able to rate carriers for connectivity, we did gather some overall data on network ...