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Canada Splits Local Phone, DSL Services
s20451 writes "Running counter to the recent string of pro-consolidation FCC rulings in the United States, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ruled that big Telcos like Bell and Telus must offer ADSL service even when local phone service is provided by another company. Effectively this ruling splits local phone and net services, opening both up for competition and lower prices. Press release here."
Some monopolies should be broken, but others are better off regulated. We got Unix out of AT&T, but I'm not even getting reliable Caller ID out of the local tel.
Effectively this ruling splits local phone and net services, opening both up for competition and lower prices
This also opens up the possibility of finger-pointing and blame assigning, instead of problem resolution. A couple of years ago, I had difficulty getting DSL from DirecTV DSL over BellSouth's phone lines - rather than solving my problem, the two companies used me as a message carrier in their blame war. I gave up, got a cable modem, and haven;t looked back.
That's fine. As long as they offer it to everyone, indiscriminately, at that price. Including internal customers.
Anything else is price discrimination, which I'd bet is illegal in Canada.
Offering it at absurd prices will merely kill it outright and drive customers to alternate providers and/or services. This is the entire idea behind deregulation, and if it's implemented properly it can work.
When it's implemented improperly, however, it becomes a nightmare and causes far more problems than existed previously -- for examples on badly done public utility deregulation see California's electric power dereg or Georgia's natural gas dereg. Either one is a case study in how not to do it, and between the two they've frozen dereg pushes on power or natural gas across the US.
Interesting - let the competition begin.
However, we'll all be wireless before too long, and there will be no place for DSL - unless this market competition drives the overall costs down. Who wants to pay for local phone service (if you're already paying for it with your wireless plan) if you just want DSL, which would then be an additional cost to the local line?
$30 local phone
+$60 DSL service
-----------------
($50) Digital Cable + ($45) Cable Internet
Assumption: You already pay $35 for a cellphone.
Sure, I'll take 125 channels as a perk for my decision making skills.
I hope this will make it harder for my decision making skills, it's amazing how quickly you learn that you have 125 channels and nothing is ever on!
Most people would consider it a good thing to have more than two media companies in a country as large as the US.
Mass media equals power. Concentration of power is bad.
Don't forget that a diverse and critical media is one of the pilars of modern democracy.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
That DSL is a sweet package, but cable is not quite so 'horrible' as you describe. Rogers cable is 1.5M/256K for $45 and it works just fine. (The intro rate for the first 4 months is $25.) In the short intervals when I lived in Toronto for business purposes (about 7 months) I *never* had a problem with it except ones that were related to my own cable box. (Some assclown tampered with it.) It worked up to the advertised speeds and my bittorrent client was very happy compared to the ultra-lame 28.8 dialup at home. (There is no broadband or even 56K available at home from any provider. Stupid rural areas.)
Clearly rogers cable is less cost effective than your DSL, but I DSL's hidden cost is that you have to pay for a phone line as well. I just rely on my cell and forego the landline. I only needed rogers long enough to scrap it at the end of getting the intro rate and then move out of TO again, but I can say for sure that it was not 'horrible.'
as a web designer, you should maybe make your files a bit smaller? It'd take less time to upload, regardless of connection, and your site would be more user-friendly, no?
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
> But the biggie is socialism. Bad bad bad socialism. Socialism is authoritarian communist crap.
No. Socialism is socialism, and communism is communism. Equating socialism with communism is typical American ignorance.