Unfortunately, it depends where in said telco you're working. As someone who works for the same telco as GP but in a different (non-telecom related) branch, people here get paid peanuts. TELUS Digital is an interesting case, since it's smaller, has more autonomy and is better-funded (when you divide by the number of employees, of course) than most other parts of the company. Want to work for any other branch? You're back to bottom-of-the-barrel salaries (not quite offset by other compensation), BigCo bureaucracy and a velocity rivaling that of molasses.
I happen to live in an only moderately-high CoL area too, not sure how people make ends meet in Vancouver, Toronto etc. on similar salaries. It's saying something when government orgs in the same industry are paying more (with better benefits to boot!)
