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Yup, the CAIP site is interesting; at least you guys seem to make the cable companies let other ISPs onto the network - I think there might be some cases where we Yanks do, but there doesn't appear to be a general requirement for them to do so. (It also appears that Canadian ILECs do some of the same tricks US ILECs do, e.g. one item about somebody whose line magically became DSL-capable once they decided to go with Sympatico....)

However, most of it (perhaps not surprisingly) seems to deal with issues for competitive ISPs rather than issues for CLECs.

Because there IS a monopoly. Maybe it's not Bell's fault for being a monopoly (I'm not sure of the history here), but you either force them to "subsidize" the competition, or else the consumer pays through the nose.

Here in Ontario, Bell would have used its power to take losses on DSL provision, setting the price below cost, in order to have a monopoly in that area. Thanks to what looks like actions of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (just did a quick google search here, wasn't certain of the background), I have a choice for DSL in Toronto. I have very little choice when it comes to cable providers, as they're not regulated. Take a quick trip to www.canadianisp.com, and check out the number of DSL and cable providers in Toronto. 51 DSL providers, 1 cable provider. Which do you think is better for consumer?

Can I claim "First worthwhile post"?

I'm going to ignore comments thus far as generally just not representative of Slashdotters, most of whom can find Canada on a map.

This story is a duplicate post on Slashdot, but parts of the story haven't really been covered yet: additional links are to be found in this story, which you can follow to find out more info on the issue, including some sample response from Canadian ISPs, one of which I represent. We're also CAIP members and I can tell you that the only comments I've seen on the members' mailing list so far are all negative, so you can probably expect resistance on our part, as the stories linked indicate. Any Canadian Slashdotters (believe it or not, not everyone here is American - I wonder if there are any geographical /. stats?) should make their views known now during the process leading up to the draft of the law that will result following the consultation process. Unfortunately the document as far as I've read it does not describe a process for doing so as an individual, but it does Identify the three government agencies involved, and industrious persons can probably take it from there.

Contrary to one informationally-ignorant prior post, as Canadians we do have Rights and Freedoms, and as in every other country (yes, including the USA) sometimes we need to speak up to exercise them and make sure that they aren't clawed back from us.

-brt

A clarification of the first statement: the CRTC does not force Bell, or anyone else, to use PPP over Ethernet to provision third party access to any broadband infrastructure. I know that you didn't say that they did, but there must be no confusion as to what the CRTC's role in this is.

Bell would certainly like you to believe that they were unfairly forced to open up their infrastructure to competitors and that the only way to provision that access was through PPPoE, but it simply isn't true. Basically no one, but Bell themselves, are in favour of provisioning open access via the PPPoE encapsulation- not the CAIP, not the CCTA and certainly not the end-user.

PPPoE is basically alpha, with respect to driver development right now, it's as proprietary as can be, it provides absolutely no benefits for the end-user and, in my own opinion, has no business being in the Sympatico HSE service, in Ontario and Quebec.