Canadian ISPs Fight Back, Again 200
jenningsthecat writes "With the recent CRTC decision giving Canadian telcos such as Bell and Telus the legal right to deny third-party ISPs access to their infrastructure, smaller Canadian Internet providers are again fighting for their lives, and are asking their customers for help. The ISPs are seeking public support, asking people to go to competitivebroadband.com to send either a form letter or a personalized message to the Industry Minister, the Prime Minister, the Opposition Leader, and optionally the respondent's local Minister of Parliament. If the CRTC's decision is not overturned, approximately 30 ISPs will likely be forced out of business. Competition in the ADSL market will be totally eliminated, and Canadians will have only two choices for wired Internet access: the local Cableco or the local Telco. Given that Canadian taxpayers have heavily subsidized the telcos in multiple ways for several decades, this decision to hand over exclusive control of the keys to the cookie jar hardly seems fair."
Bigger picture! (Score:4, Informative)
Living in Canada and working in Telecommunications a bit (and my father still does) you begin to learn a few things about these two big companies. Where I live there are 2 basic Internet Service Providers, Shaw (cable) and Telus (Telecommunications).
Telus, being the Telecommunications company - actually OWNS most of the physical infrastructure, or the wiring, that runs across the city. Shaw basically sets up a deal (not sure of the terms) so that they can provide internet access THROUGH telus' wiring. You can try both service providers, but essentially you have two choices: Regular speed with random faults of downtime (telus) or something slightly slower but pretty reliable.
The big wigs of these companies are by no means in competition, with the way they charge rates, make deals to use each others services*, I wouldn't be surprised if they both play Golf together, all the while discussing "How can we make an extra few Million this year. A little for me, a little for you..."
*(for example, 411 directory service from ALOT of providers that aren't Telus is done by Telus Employees)
Re:Bigger picture! (Score:4, Informative)
FYI, while they "own" the infrastructure, they didn't pay for it. Your tax dollars did.
And they use up BILLIONS of dollars per year worth of free right-of-way that only they have access to.
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Umm ...What?
Shaw and Telus may be entangled somewhere way up on the upstream side, but the local wiring in the city is completely different. Telus is a DSL provider, and Shaw is a Cable provider.
Perhaps you're thinking of Bell and Telus?
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From your physical house, yes, Shaw will handle the cable, Telus will handle the DSL. As soon as it hits a Shaw building - and it needs to hop outside of the city, it sure ain't over a Shaw Cable, and when it needs to hit a different server inside the city to get outside the city, they go through Telus wiring.
Similarily Shaw offers Phone services. Telus offers Television services. They both provide the EXACT same services, whatever you want (if you wanted dialup you could still go through Shaw) because the
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Shaw and Telus may be entangled somewhere way up on the upstream side, but the local wiring in the city is completely different. Telus is a DSL provider, and Shaw is a Cable provider.
I'm using Telus, and Internet access they offer (along with phone landline and TV) comes to me in form of an Ethernet socket on the wall of my apartment. I've also yet to see any "random faults of downtime" that GP mentioned - so far it's been working 24/7 for all I know (and yes, I do leave long-running torrents overnight etc). This is in Vancouver.
That said, it's a new building (they've finished building it last year, so far as I know), and I've heard that Telus had fiber wired to it from the get go, so i
Re:Bigger picture! (Score:4, Interesting)
Shaw uses the cable lines.
Telus uses phone.
Where does the cable start going through the phone?
Re:Bigger picture! (Score:4, Informative)
Where does the cable start going through the phone?
As soon as it hits a Shaw building and needs to go somewhere else.
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Actually, if I'm not mistaken, Shaw owns quite a bit of the backbone systems, though they obviously have to peer with Nexxia and others.
Articles like this make Slashdot great. (Score:3, Insightful)
I consider myself lucky that in my area, the cableco isn't big and mean (Eastlink), and Telus is (AFAIK) the only telco for ADSL in my area, which I would never in a million years use.
How many shenanigans and payola are Rogers and Bell throwing at the CRTC anyways?
Re:Slashdots slashdots great articles like this (Score:3, Informative)
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There are still DSL wholesalers, that use Telus's or Bell's last-mile infrastructure, but have their own transit/DNS/e-mail/etc. I'm with TekSavvy, which I know services both Bell and Telus areas. Otherwise I'm not sure about Telus, I live in Bell-land so I mostly know Bell-area ISPs. I think TekSavvy is the only one that services both Bell and Telus areas (Yak does, but they just re-sell TekSavvy).
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I hope the 'competition' is better with those than it is here.
I can use Qwest, the telco, as my ISP for $30/month. Or I can use a 3rd party ISP and only have to pay Qwest $28 for the line and pay the 3rd party $20+ for access......
While i do have a 3rd party ISP, you can bet there are darn few people who wish to pay almost twice for no particular reason. Even cable is cheaper than 3rd party DSL here :(
One of these days i need to get off my vintage DSL line i suppose. Still works great for gaming even at onl
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Right now the competition is better. The rate that Bell (Qwest in your example) can charge the competition is regulated by the CRTC to costs + 15% profit margin. This whole article is about the CRTC removing that regulation, creating a situation like you have with Qwest where the independent ISPs will cost significantly more.
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"How many shenanigans and payola are Rogers and Bell throwing at the CRTC anyways?"
Like we'll ever know.
Can I once again point out that if UUCP had kept evolving instead of being distracted by the dialup isp with pretty pictures then by now we'd have a robust mesh and big telco wouldn't be so nearly in the way.
It's not too late to do this with wireless meshes, the wrt54 seems to be the weapon of choice here.
Get to work. Nobody's gonne do this for you. Connect your router with any other routers you can see a
Dear Canada, welcome to our world! (Score:4, Insightful)
Signed, the USofA.
Very few of us down here have any choice for broadband other than the duopoly of telco/cable, and both providers are usually some combination of pillaging our wallets and skimping on service.
Just maybe, you can head this off.
Good Luck!
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I wish we could - but its already too late. Any of the smaller ISP's have basically already shut down because they couldn't compete with the two. This latest move by the CRTC was the last nail in the coffin, sealed the deal.
Re:Dear Canada, welcome to our world! (Score:4, Informative)
TekSavvy [teksavvy.com] (the best DSL provider I've ever worked with, Google for reviews, you'll understand) is still around, but this decision will probably kill them. It's a real shame.
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You may want to double check that.
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There's a slight latency hit because they're entirely based in Ontario, but they do serve in at least Montreal.
I swear to you (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, you do NOT want to have to deal with Bell Canada customer service or support for any reason whatsoever. They are legendary for the atrocious level of customer care, for bilking their customers, for owing customers money but never giving it back, for simply getting every last little thing amazingly wrong, for the amounts of pain inflicted and for their sheer level of unfairness.
I remember when I got my first telephone line back in the mid-80's, within months I had an unexplained and impossible charge, and I simply couldn't contest the charge - it was either pay it plus (growing) interest or have no phone.
My god, recently I moved to an apartment and had to endure two months of support calls to get my line moved too, and a Bell representative tried to sell me something called Line Insurance - basically, for an extra $20/mo it would guarantee that this sort of thing didn't happen. They wanted to charge me extra to ensure that I got what I already paid for! Can you imagine?!
No, Bell Canada is evil incarnate and must die.
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I can vouch for this. When we moved our office, Bell neglected to enable the phones at the new place for a week (they only had about 2 months' notice), so we had to forward the public number to my boss's cellphone and do business like that. And that's one of the GOOD stories!
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I had a cell phone through Bell, and when my contract was up, I decided to switch, only because I didn't like any of their phones and mine was outdated (3 year contract right).
Anyways, so for whatever reason, Bell simply could not let me go. I told them, the contract is up next month, I'm cancelling my plan at the end of the contract. And the customer service rep was unable to understand that I was giving him advanced notice, and he was like, "You can pay the 200 dollars to buy out of your contract now.. Or
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Bell employees call it: "Bell Hell."
My horror stories are endless. They somehow messed up my move, and after 1 year and many many lengthy and repeated phone calls, still were not billing me at the correct address. I finally canceled all my Bell services. It was the only way I could get them to stop billing the wrong address.
Once, someone hacked Bell's backbone routers. All the tech support people would do is go: "We do not support trace route. We do not support trace route. Trace route is not install
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I'm pretty sure Bell outsources most of their tech support to India and/or the Philippines nowadays, so, y'know, progress.
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Not all of it. If you pay an astronomical amount of money, you can subscribe to a Bell Nexxia** provided service (T1, T3, etc). Then you have the privilege of being shat on by Bell Nexxia Technical Support, which is just as bad as the outsourced support, except that they've an extra layer of arrogance to them and you get a double-helping of gall knowing that, despite your spending millions of dollars per year you're treated no better than the poor bastards who order Bell DSL Basic.
Let me regale you with s
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They wanted to charge me extra to ensure that I got what I already paid for! Can you imagine?!
The nerve! However, did you consider that the "official" price for certain services might be regulated by the Canadian government at a rate that is too low to actually provide the service without losing money? Perhaps this "insurance" represents the difference between what it costs to actually provide that level of service and what Bell is allowed by the government to charge for it. You get what you pay for after all, even if regulators try to create "free lunches" by defying the forces of economics with im
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Pluralizing with an Apostrophe? (Score:2)
Me fail English? That's unpossible!
Seriously... it's "ISPs" not "ISP's".
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Using an apostrophe to pluralize a number, acronym, or capital letter is a style choice, and perfectly acceptable, even if some people dislike it.
Language evolves blah blah blah ...
Using a construct that doesn't involve numbers, acronyms, abbreviations, contractions, neologisms, or slang is also a style choice. Or is thinking and some extra typing really that difficult?
Whatever your opinion of the current state of English usage, non-native speakers rarely make the mistakes that litter the pages of Slashdot
stop the never ending struggle (Score:3, Insightful)
Gah, this crap is so tiring.
Any new regulation can only be a band-aid solution.
The correct solution is to break the monopolies by creating a free market.
Municipal public fibre optic infrastructure.
Layer 2 (maybe even layer 1) service to every building as a public service.
Access to that infrastructure with the same access rules we use for the roads.
(In other words, completely open for private and commercial use)
with a fibre bundle to every home any service provider who wanted to provide Internet, TV, Telephone or any other innovative service could go to the municipal exchange and patch us in to their gear.
This would set the stage for a vibrant competitive market for telecoms.
It would allow private, non-commercial telecoms activities.
It would be CHEAPER than running cable and copper to every building as we do now.
It would be future-proof because the fibre has effectively unlimited capacity.
There is already great competition for IP service, the Internet is a vibrant market place except for the last mile.
Go to any public exchange and shop for IP transit and you will have dozens of providers competing for your business.
Throttling, DNS hijacking, p2p filtering.... these are exclusively last-mile monopoly problems.
We all know that last-mile telecoms infrastructure is a natural monopoly just like power lines, roads and sewers.
So why don't we stop beating around the bush creating heavily regulated and subsidized private monopolies then constantly fighting with them and just run the last-mile ourselves?
Letter of appology from Telus (Score:2)
Somewhere around here I have a letter of apology from the past president of Telus!
They started to shut off my phone service. You see - I had to build a time division reflectometer and shoot the line that I wanted my DSL service on. This is pretty easy to do. We went to Radio shack and bought about $20 worth of stuff and a 1.5 volt battery and hooked up a dual channel oscilloscope. About 15 minutes later we knew where the line taps were. So I called in Telus and asked them to remove the line taps and tol
Re:Letter of appology-And if my Lawyer doesn't sca (Score:2)
It's probably good for Bell Canada that guns are not nearly as legal in Canada as they are in the USA.
WISP (Score:2)
ASPX? What? (Score:2)
Am I the only one who thinks it's ironic that a bunch of small IPSs fighting the big monopolies are using a Microsoft server for their website?
"Competition"? Markets are evil, remember? (Score:2)
> Competition in the ADSL market will be totally eliminated, and Canadians will
> have only two choices for wired Internet access: the local Cableco or the
> local Telco.
Surely you don't want competition. That means a market, and all the evils of capitalism! You want good, old-fashioned regulated monopolies! Or better yet, just nationalize the telcos and cablecoms and everything will be just fine.
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Well when the telco's were crown corporations things were much better. This experiment with privatization has been a massive failure. The private companies have found that it is cheaper to lobby for laws/regulations that create profits that is much more profitable then giving better service.
There are quite a few businesses that are better ran as nationalized businesses then private business.
summary is incorrect, issue is more complex (Score:2)
What basically everyone so far has missed is that the CRTC decision only applies to broadband ethernet services. That is, new installs with stuff like fiber to the home.
The existing cable plant and DSL services are still available to third-party ISPs at regulated prices.
However, I've heard rumours that Bell is trying to claim that some of the new residential neighborhoods are connected via broadband ethernet even though it's still DSL on the local loop, and thus bypassing the intent of the DSL regulation.
O
I read the bloody Decision by the CRTC... (Score:2)
... here: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2008/dt2008-17.htm [crtc.gc.ca]
and, well, blow me down, I'm almost proud to say that it is a damn reasonable decision. Based on what I read (an not what people are suggesting it means), all it really says is that....
T1 lines will no longer be 'controlled' services in 5 years time.... (i.e. the govt will no longer regulate T1 access).... but, on the up side....
for the forseeable future, ADSL service will be regulated, the price will continue to be 'fixed' using the same price s
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Read up on UBB too.
This is bad, really bad.
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http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-484.htm [crtc.gc.ca]
UBB, that's bad
Re:Goverment (Score:4, Insightful)
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The problem is the current big ADSL ISP's(Bell and Telus) have a monopoly on their markets(It might be an Oligopoly, I don't know if Bell and Telus compete in the same geographic areas.)
You got that right, all the telcos and cable companies have very specific geographic areas, quite often the only real choice is either ADSL or cable, and in many locations you don't even have such a choice.
Re:Goverment (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true. Just like the power company and the piped natural-gas company are regulated, so too does the Internet service company need to be regulated. Since the government granted these monopolies, it also has the right to control their pricing.
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Actually, these monopolies/limited markets derive from ownership of wired infrastructure. ADSL is either bought directly from Bell/Telus, who own the phone wires, or a reseller.
The other option is the cable company, who owns the coaxial cable network.
Re:Goverment (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry but I don't see the distinction. Whether you're talking about the power company, the natural gas company, or the internet provider, they still have a monopoly over the market, which was granted by the government's express permission. (Example: Comcast was granted monopoly by my local politicians.) That grant gives the government the power to control pricing. That grant also gives the government power to revoke the monopoly and give it to somebody else.
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Re:Goverment (Score:5, Insightful)
They 'OWN' a network subsidized by public funds on land granted by public right of ways providing what has become a CRITICAL infrastructure, there should be no question of whether the government has the right to regulate, it should be MANDATED. How many businesses would be out of the water without the NET these days. Could a local government even function WITHOUT THE ONLINE ACCESS TO RESOURCES ?
I happen to own the right of way behind the houses on my block that was used/granted to AT&T when they were the cable monopoly around here. AT&T has since relocated their wires underground and no longer uses the right of way, but several other companies WHO WERE NOT on the original agreement still do. Astound cable, after some convincing offered me free service, which I accepted, they are my net provider now, but I am demanding the removal of ALL other lines and equipment under the basis that they were never given legal authorization. AT&T decided that their usage meant they had a right to lease out that same space, which they did not have the right to do. My first court date was postponed by request of the defendants lawyers after they realized I was serious, had a lawyer, the deed the land in question, and the ORIGINAL copy of the agreement with AT&T. I am so glad my parents were organized and had good foresight.
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Also try creating a cable company to compete against the current Comcast monopoly. You'll find yourself in court because Comcast (or AT&T or Cox or whoever) has been granted an exclusive monopoly. Therefore since competition is banned, by law, government has a right to step-in and regulate that monopoly to ensure it's not abusing its special legal privileges.
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>>>the deed for the land in question, and the ORIGINAL copy of the agreement with AT&T
You won't win. The politicians will just use eminent domain to take-away your land, give it to government (on the basis of "bettering the community"), and then lease that land to the corporations in question. Yes that's called "theft" but individual rights mean nothing in this ex-republic. It's how a mall in Jew Jersey was able to take-over private homes, tear them down, and build several stores (upheld by
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Bell holds Ontario, Quebec, and the maritime provinces (I think), Telus controls BC and Albeta, Saskatchewan has Sasktel (The only crown corporation of the bunch), and Manitoba has MTS (Formerly a crown corp, now a publicly traded company).
None of them compete with each other.
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Oh, yes they do. They don't compete for local land-line service, but you can bet that advanced networking are wireless are being hotly contested.
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If the prices will go too much up, I'm sure customers will be unhappy and there will be new ISP's taking place.
Have you taught about the price to enter such a market? It is not possible for any new player to come in and create its own infrastructure and try to compete with the Bell, Telus, Rogers & Videotron of the Canadian market which all have huge market share. So yes the CRTC has to come in and legislate and force the market to open up especially since all Telcos have been subsidized over the years by the Canadians.
Re:Goverment (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Goverment (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, O Canada, don't emulate us on this one. America needs the "Crazy Uncle" to the north to provide some alternatives to business as usual.
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Wait... which is the crazy one?
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Bilge Rat, the metric system is the most long-standing, silly embarrassment the States (yes I am a States'er) has. We are one of what, TWO? TWO!??! countries still using imperial.
It's absurd.
Apparently being top dog means never having to do anything good for you.
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If I had upvotes, I'd upvote this to the moon. This is exactly correct.
Re:Goverment (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, if I were Bell and the CRTC said I could do so, I would stop offering wholesale internet altogether immediately.
What business wouldn't love the opportunity to instantly and permanently kill all its competitors except those on completely different lines? Why adjust prices when you can just kill them off?
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Of course, if you did that, then the CRTC would immediately be deluged with complaints, leaving them with no choice but to recant their decision. It's better to boil the frog slowly, so nobody notices anything's wrong until it's too late.
Going Backwards (Score:2)
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Lies. I would do it in a very controlled manner.
I'd send out notification to every customer of every wholesaler that they could, for a limited time, get a special deal with Bell due to their ISP going out of business (you know, one of those "a few months free or highly discounted then pay through the nose for two / three years" deals). Bell has these customer lists because they ultimately have to set up the service. Such a deal would be extremely time limited (see below).
I'd then shut down the wholesaler
Re:Goverment (Score:5, Interesting)
The ISP I worked for for ten years, and was the system/network admin for for seven of those years went under because Telus and Shaw basically set up a scenario in which we couldn't compete with them. Yes, we did have a fiber connection via Shaw's Big Pipe subsidiary, but it was damned pricey. Worse was Telus's stranglehold on the PRI dialup lines. Worst of all was that while both technically were supposed to open their networks to us so we could resell DSL or cable, the hoops one had to jump through and the poverty-level profit margins they allowed made it all but pointless. In the end, we tried to roll out our own WiFi, but geographically or area just wasn't conducive to that.
The whole deck was stacked from the very beginning, and the CRTC, despite all these grand proclamations of protecting competition, had already handed the keys to the kingdom. To be honest with you, if I were a small ISP now, I'd close shop. There's no money in it any more.
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That's almost exactly my experience with Bell here in Kansas. :(
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Then deregulation has ultimately left us where we started, with monopolies. Worst of all, as far as Internet goes, there are no real rate framework, and with Canadian ISPs tending to be very geographical, we'll probably enter a sort of informal price fixing arrangement. In short, the taxpayer who underwrote most of this, gets the short end of the stick.
Look at SMS, because that's the model the big guys want, and Canada continues to slip behind the rest of the world.
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Actually here in BC the infrastructure was built by BC Tel, a government owned telco. Then some free enterprisers got into power and announced that private industry is way more efficient and basically gave the company away to their friends. Now we see how much more efficient private industry is at lobbying away their competition.
I think they are making a pretty good profit from me. Close to $30 a month for a 26.6 Kbps internet connection. $30 a month for the phone line. $9 a month for call display (my wife
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I'm living in your world, sadly. I'm done with both Bell and Rogers, may they roast forever in the hottest corners
of hell. But, they're the big players and the CRTC is a stacked deck. I signed the petition and circulated
it to all my friends.
The thing is, more than half a dozen of them work for Rogers! Can't wait to see what they do.
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I am pretty sure if you check it out the price on average for a dedicated high speed connection over the last 8 years in Canada has stayed the same, the speed has increased a bit but not by leaps and bounds but compared to many other countries Canada is starting to lag behind. There is no widespread ADSL 2nd generation here, no fiber to the home, no TV over ADSL or other such 'newer' services...
There are already fewer ISPs in Canada then there were 10 years ago when you would have dozens of choice in any m
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Then why do Telcos "own" the networks? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the infrastructure was built with government money, why doesn't the infrastructure belong to the government?
Do the big telco companies lease the infrastructure from the government? If so, can't little telco's also lease it?
How do the telcos own the infrastructure?
Re:Then why do Telcos "own" the networks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Corruption and lobbying.
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Why's that not redundant? (Score:2)
Corruption and lobbying.
I thought that was the same thing? ...
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Because the government didn't want to pay for building it (nor it should) so it let private companies do it and chipped in some of the money and other incentives. Nothing unusual.
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Government owned the telco and built the infrastructure out.
Free enterprise people get into power, announce that private industry is always more efficient and by giving away our BC Tel prices will drop, service will improve etc.
Now private industry owns the infrastructure and lobbies away their competition as it is cheaper then competing on merits.
I dream of having a good enough phone line to hit 28.8 Kbps or even half of that upstream.
Re:Goverment (Score:5, Insightful)
But the government has given these companies a monopoly over the infrastructure. If the government granted you the same monopoly then it's not a matter of your freedom to set your own prices, it's a matter of your obligation to the government and the public for being granted that monopoly.
What new ISP's? The existing ones have a, say it with me, monopoly. A government granted (and enforced) monopoly at that.
I think you've completely missed the entire issue here. The government historically regulated the prices and forced these ISP's to open up their lines to allow true competition so that the unhappy customers could go to a new ISP. But now they're allowing these ISP's to set the prices for their competitors. They're forced to sell access to their network (due to their monopoly status), previously they were forced to do so in such a way that other ISPs could compete with them, but now they can just set such a high price that their offering is the cheapest on the market, driving the smaller ISP's out of business.
Re:Goverment (Score:5, Insightful)
There won't be new ISP's taking their place because you can't run a second set of cables throughout the city/region/whatever at a competitive price. Because the previous guys got subsidized.
Possibly you can't do so at any cost because the previous guys where granted exclusive rights or because it's politically impossible to get permission now. Though that's irrelevant due to not being able to afford it if you could anyway.
No, it's a monopoly. (Score:3, Informative)
Your logic only works in a competitive marketplace.
The wires to the home/business are owned by a monopoly. It would be a rare case indeed where putting new wires to a customer makes sense. Most of the time (in the US, anyhow) it's not legally possible to do so.
If these ISPs go away, there will never (outside of wireless) be any alternative to the Telco or the Cable company. Ever.
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>>>Companies should be allowed to sell their services at a price they want
Yes except those companies are government-granted monopolies, like the power company, the piped natural gas company, or the Internet service company. Then the government, since it granted the monopoly, also has the right to control its pricing.
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Let me put it another way. If a government pays a company to build a bridge
Re:Goverment (Score:5, Insightful)
Market forces? Is this some kind a a euphemism for monopolies, anti-competitive practices and union busting? Because that's the only context I ever hear it used in.
Wake up. Wake up you and all the other "free market" drones around here. The "Free market" does not, has not and will not ever exist. Period. It is a pipe dream concocted from the ramblings of economists, most of whom were in the employ of powerful groups who would like nothing better than a free hand to do as they please in any sector of the economy or society in general. It is, at best and idealised theoretical utopia, worthy only of consideration as a thought experiment. If that.
In reality, you cannot separate economics from the general deviousness, manipulation, underhandedness and skullduggary that goes on in almost every walk of human life. People game system and companies, especially big companies, will game the system up to and quite often past the point where they can get away with it. In this reality, on this planet Earth, your free market theories are about as applicable as theories of anti-matter.
The big telco's are going to degrade service, cripple and destroy all competition, punitively raise prices and in general wreck the whole internet unless there is strong government regulation in place to prevent them from doing so. Platitudes about the efficiency of private industry and the prices "the market" will bear are just that. Platitudes, carrying no more weight than a dry tissue. History, and indeed recent events, have demonstrated quite conclusively that no major industry can be left to its own devices, ever . It simply does not work. The prime, prime, prime example was the recent financial crash. But there are many other examples across all industries.
The internet is now one of the foundations of our society and we cannot allow it to be held to ransom by a handful of individuals hiding behind corporate veils and pandering economics.
Free markets? Good idea, we should try that! (Score:2)
I can't believe that anybody actually believes in free market principles in 2009.
If free market principles were actually working the way that their evangelists have been claiming for the last 40 or 50 years, then last year's financial crisis should never have happened, because obviously financial services firms would value their reputation enough that they wouldn't engage in bad behavior.
How's that working out so far?
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Don't have so many damn kids. Problem solved.
Next?
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The issue here (as it is in the States) is that the taxpayer basically underwrote and at least partially funded much of the communications infrastructure out there. These companies keep acting as if they and their shareholders were ultimately responsible for this, but they're not.
If I were the CRTC, I'd say "Either you give smaller ISPs breathing room, or we'll rule your way, but now you will have to pay for every inch of right-of-way that the taxpayer basically gave to you. You will also have to pay back
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Just to clarify: MTS is not part of Telus. MTS merged with/bought Allstream.
Interesting, MTS and Telus are having a slapfest because one or the other started poaching customers and erecting towers in the other's territory (and now both are). The end-result is that mobile/wireless in Alberta and Manitoba is a mess right now.
Do you want to know what fun is? Try getting Bell/Bell West and Telus to cooperate when you're in eastern Canada but your western Canada office(s) are down. Dealing with bitchy techs
Re:Letting it die? (Score:5, Informative)
But they do. Check out the reviews of TekSavvy on DSLreports [dslreports.com]. Vastly superior service to Bell that can't exist without government defended peering agreements.
Disclaimer: I am not employed, contracted, or a family member of anyone connected to TekSavvy.
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I never said they were perfect. They're a shit-ton better than Bell though.
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Teksavvy is a linux friendly provider that lets me run my own servers. I get a 200G bandwidth cap, 5M/800K DSL line for $29.95/month. Static IP address for an extra $4/month. Bell's service is a 25G cap 6M/800K DSL on which I cannot run servers, cannot get static IP addresses, and their customer service is notoriously bad! (Die Emily, Die!)
Rogers is almost twice the cost (however, twice the speed): 95G cap,
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I have some bad news, then. I just got an email from Teksavvy support. This decision will affect home phone service as well as internet access. If this goes through, Teksavvy will be out of business.
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