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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."
... that someone here would work to implement this in the United States. It would mean that companies like Verizon and Qwest wouldn't have the stranglehold on broadband that they currently do...
In Phoenix, we have two different Cablemodem providers, with some fairly significant overlapping coverage, but all of the independent DSL line providers for residential closed except for Qwest, and Qwest still uses Pair Gain, which kills DSL.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This is quite good news. I'm glad we aren't following the US.
:)
I love living here
...by pricing it ridiculously high. If they get suckers who sign up, then they profit. If they don't, well they really didn't want the business anyway.
Should happen soon, though - you can already order internet access from cable companies w/o subscribing to their TV services.
maybe next they'll force computer manufacturers to offer alternative OSses on computers, to open up competition and lower prices.
Machine9dotNet
I'm an American, you insensitive clod!
The phone companies are already basically monopolies, and here they were willing to sell their DSL at a loss for a few years to put other DSL providers out of business. Sure, they had to share the lines under the law, they just made it difficult and expensive.
Bell was losing hundreds of subscribers a day due to their bandwidth capping earlier this year, and now they have to provide ADSL service to really small markets where it will cost them more to upgrade the infrastructure to support ADSL than they could possibly make in revenues from customers?
;)
Sell your Bell stock!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
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.
Actually, it's a compliment.
Although his logic is wrong, taken literally
(albeit incorrectly)
Canada==America++
would mean that Canada is 1 up on America.
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.
They have unbundled local service and dsl so that people don't have to pay for a land line to get high speed internet access? So a person could just subscribe to the high speed service and do his own internet telephony?
Sure, opening up things to competition would be nice, but at the moment, there's two big things that hold me back from using Bell's ADSL: the monthly bandwidth cap, and the speed. I'm with Rogers, and they decided to hold back on implementing a similar plan until they were done seeing how Bell fared with it... and they haven't implemented it yet. :) Plus I've found that my cable connection is often faster than friends of mine who went with Bell.
From where I'm sitting, it costs about the same for Bell or Rogers. The unlimited bandwidth and increased speed that Rogers offers is very nice, considering that I have roommates whose downloading habits I can't control.
In other words, the telcos can compete with themselves all they like, but (at least in my situation) it's a moot point if they still can't really compete with cable.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for more competition. But "unjustly discriminating against their competitors"? And "undue preference"? Since when is it bad to give your own company "preference", and who are they to say it is "undue"?
This looks to me like socialism at work under the guise of capitalism. In the one hand, they uphold the virtues of competition, and in the other, they take away the rights of businessmen to decide how they compete. *shrug*
Sola Scriptura * Sola Gratia * Sola Fide * Solus Christus * Soli Deo Gloria
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!
Amazing how US governmental organizations only "reign themselves in" when massive corporations benefit as a result...
A few months ago I acquired a cell phone from Rogers AT&T. Soon I realized that having a cellphone and a landline phone seem redundant. So I cancelled my landline and have all my voice calls through my mobile phone. But cancelling the landline phone (from Telus) means I cannot get their ADSL service. Have to use the alternate Cable service offered by my Cable company. The decision means ADSL service does not have to be tied to you having a landline phone account Good job CRTC
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
Actually I am in Canada and a friend only pays $25 CDN for DSL from Telus. And if this story is correct due to competition it may go down
And it's more evident with the recent news that we keep hearing how Canada is moving forward while the States are slipping into regress by way of draconian laws and regulations a la DMCA, Super-DMCA, Media Consolidation, etc.
I've had Bell ADSL in Toronto for almost 3 years now. Setup was a pain, and I had problems with it about one year later for a few days, but other than that it's been rock solid, and very reliable performance. Not FAST - 128kbps up, 1mbps down - but I know I can get those speeds any time.
Of course... 3 years later, I find myself paying more for less. Speed hasn't increased at all (why would it?), the price has gone up a few dollars, and they've introduced monthly transfer limits - 10GB combined upload/download, with absurd prices for extra bandwidth. What ticks me off is that they still advertise it as "unlimited".
There are other, smaller, local DSL providers - but the speed and prices are comparable.
Maybe this will finally help advance an industry that's been stagnant - from the consumer's point of view - for over 4 years now!
Hehehe... oh I kill myself... I really do...
*keeps looking for a way to afford SDSL*
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
I work for a CLEC in the US and I really don't see why thats necessary. I'm sure we would offer a discount to customers who purchased phone service and DSL from us, the ILECs should be allowed to sell whatever packages they want as well. Allowing the little guy access to the lines is one thing, but regulating how they can sell their packages is too much.
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it." -Voltaire
Telus, the big telco out here in the west, offers a good DSL service. They have not begun to enforce any capping, unlike the cable companies, and the speed is much better than many (if not most) of the US residential DSL providers...
I don't think this announcement will have nearly the impact in the west that it will have in the central and eastern parts of Canada. Out here, there really aren't any viable competing telcos, and Telus allows other companies to resell DSL under other brand names (for the same price, as far as I can tell) so who you get DSL from seems pretty irrelevant at this point.
Being able to get DSL-only service would be cool, however. I know people who really don't need a land line, but they have it just to get the DSL service.
- Murphy's Corollary: - It is impossible to make things foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Bell ADSL 1mbps/256k in the Ottawa area is $25/mo. In most cases, cheaper than the rest of your phone bill.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
"Assumption: You already pay $35 for a cellphone.
Sure, I'll take 125 channels as a perk for my decision making skills."
One. Phone providers offer a 3-10 (I forget what it was after tax) dollar a month dial tone, which is fine for DSL. If your wonderful "decision making skills" can do the math on that one, you'll realize that if you DONT need actually need the land line, its cheaper to get that instead of paying for a 30 month "DSL connector" (so to speak).
Two. I wouldnt trade my land line for a cell phone any day. I can call anywhere I want in the US, I dont pay long distance, and the calls are crystal clear. I dont have to worry about charging my phone, or is it "off time (night/weekends)" or is the call going to be disconnected. I can hear the other person, the phone isnt the size of a used bar of soap so I can cradle it without holding it to my ear (and I have a headset too, in case I need "hands free", ie, gaming). Plus I'll never be tempted to drive with the fucking thing stuck to my ear.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
In my area (Toronto), DSL is much faster than cable. I get 3.5Mbs/800Kbs for about CAD$50. Cable isn't an option as it is only offered one company (Rogers), and it's a horrible one at that.
Bell Canada has been a thorn in my side for years. During the dailup years Bell was late to recognize the Internet. In an attempt to catch up it is rumoured that Bell tried to heavly increase the cost of the phone lines owned by ISPs. I believe there were some court cases and the business plan was dropped. Later, I found myself using a new TV system called LookTV. Just when things where going well for them (including a blazing fast wireless Internet access plan) it is rumoured that Bell bought out Look's biggest financial backer and cut their funding. That was a few years ago and Look has yet to recover. The final straw is ADSL. No matter who your ISP is (and there are a few) Bell owns all the lines. At one point it is rumoured that Bell was leasing it's lines to it's own ISP branch at cost in order to drive the other ISPs out of business. I think there was a court case.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Online Gaming, and legal software downloads (linux ISOs and packcages, etc) these all eat bandwidth and when I'm downloading a 650MB ISO, I'd like it to be done within a reasonable time, not days.
... Cable is by far the superior choice in Manitoba.
I'm also a webdesigner and I am constantly uploading files to webservers, I like to be able to do this quickly and not have to wait around killing productivity. When I need to VNC to a server I wouldn't mind a decent response, rather than an extremely choppy connection.
There ARE legitimate uses for bandwidth by home users.
In the small town I live, we have the choice b/w Cable from Shaw, or ADSL from MTS
But forcing companies to provide a service...seems wrong, if you want to regulate, don't have private companies. If they want the control, the gov't should run them.
Gibble: Descriptive of an emotional state in which one's mind is scrabbling for some purchase on reality
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.'
I think you missed the gist of the ruling from the FCC in the last big mess over DSL. It is an ugly, ugly mess. They did NOT back away from regulation as you suggest-- the ruling *requires* the telephone companies to share their networks for local phone service. However, they did end the requirement for linesharing of the "last mile" for alternative DSL companies.
If you had to regulate one or the other, which would you have picked? The one that requires the telcos to allow competitors to use their entire network to sell phone service? Or the one that allows companies with their own nationwide backbone infrastructure (like Covad) to use JUST the last-mile portion of the lines?
I REALLY don't understand why they picked what they did. It's not pro-consolidation OR anti-regulation. It's the worst possible combination of choices. It's no wonder there is widespread objection. Although most of the "nerd news" reporting painted the decision as one that was bad for nerds (no more DSL competition)-- mainstream press widely reported it as a terrible loss for the telcos (because they have to basically do all the infrastructure for their POTS competitors). Now, if a decision screws everybody (dsl users, dsl competitors, AND the telcos)-- it can't possibly be doing any of us any good. What the hell was the FCC thinking?
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.
"When I need to VNC to a server I wouldn't mind a decent response, rather than an extremely choppy connection.
Latency, not bandwidth affects VNC the most.
Sure it is. Bell still gets 2/3 of the $$$ when you go to a non-Bell service for ADSL, so they're getting their money anyway --- but what the hell, once wireless service gets a bit better, I'll probably go for that instead. For the really big d/ls, I'll just shell into the box at the office. Oh, BTW, Bell also get their cut when you use an alternate voice service.
to emigrate. The real land of the free. Issues like this seem to always favor the consumer and small business rather than the conglomerate. Pot is not-illegal. Gays are free to marry while in the US they have to fight to keep the police out of their bedrooms. Not everyone is considered a terrorist until proven otherwise. Unfortunately you are still amazingly too anti-gun for my tastes.
Seriously, why didn't the big guys win? They always win here. Are your politicians not for sale? Or are your corporations too cheap to buy them?
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
I don't know about Canada being a socialist state (have always wondered why people would think that ... ), but I have lived in both countries (and have family living in both countries).
The truth is that the Canadian government is happy to infringe upon the freedom of corporations in order to enhance the lives of the individual. (e.g. decrimilize pot smoking, legal gay marriage and broadband for the people).
The US government, on the other hand, is too happy to curtail the freedom of the individual and let big corporations (and their campaign contributions) do whatever they want. (e.g. Patriot 1/2, DMCA, RIAA, MPAA, etc.)
Cheers.
Can't resist a good troll...
Taxes aren't that bad here, especially when you factor in the cost of medical insurance. (I make ~$60k/yr CDN and pay about 28% taxes without loopholes, so duh!) For some, they're better than having an equivalent position in the USA, as they discover when they move down and experience user-pays-for-everything, and they move back to Canada for economic reasons. It all depends on cost-of-living in various regions, and even the region of Canada or US one moves to, as well as the income bracket you're in. I've found that the moderately wealthy complain about taxes consistently, if they're from a somewhat socialized industrial nation.
If I get cancer, I can still change jobs or provinces without losing my medical benefits or paying disproportionately. That's not commie, that's humane, you twit!
One other thing... gross disparity of income leads to other extremely expensive social ills, like massive prisons, health problems, badly educated populace, violence and insecurity, drug use, despair, riots, and extreme cultural stress. It's a hidden cost, and we canucks have our share of these problems. I think it's hilarious that 'Americans' consider us socialized pinkos!
Besides, isn't Robin Hood a hero? You presume that the rich never steal from the poor.
Damn those pesky terrorists
"An uneducated populace is unable/unwilling to go out and provide for themselves, hence you have income disparity."
I'd like to test that theory, but don't have the time right now to do the literature search. My experience (hanging and working with millionaires and entrepeneurs, hanging and working with ne'er-do-well artists and slackers, living and working with the homeless/street kids/multi-generation impoverished) suggests to me that there are many educated loafers, and that many of the wealthiest are not there by merit; and that an education can often lead to pursuits other than the acquisition of personal wealth.
I've seen lots of folks who work their asses off doing fundamentally crucial work, and make $22K/yr, and I know plenty who make +$100K but mostly cruise, or put in long hours but it isn't really crucial work. This is the old problem of exchange value (for labour) not being rationalized with use value... never mind danger pay.
No-one's disproved the industrial theory of skimming surplus value of labour for profits to my satisfaction, if you know of such disproof please direct me to it.
"I also find the assertion of socialists that the government knows what's good for me better than I do insulting and extremely condescending." I couldn't agree with you more, except that I see that it is primarily 'conservative' governments who tell me what substances I can put in my body, who I can sleep with or marry, what I can watch or read, and who I can worship (or not).
On the other hand, since any society is implicitly interdependent, we share some of the costs of idiots who dump PCB's in their back yard or can't drive properly, so I'm glad that there's at least some regulation, e.g. the rules of the road! Stay on the right of the yellow line, eh! It's good for you!
Damn those pesky terrorists
The stories I have heard from my friends that had it back then concur with that. But basically the one time they did get an IP they just recorded it and told the computer that it was a static address. After entering the DNS of the local university, all was good.
"I found huge amounts of latency that increased at every hop. It could have been my neighbourhood."
I hadn't heard any stories like that, but I guess it varied from area to area. It was still fast 4 years ago for my friends when it worked.
"I wouldn't go back to them now because of their AUP: no servers. I pay $4/mo for a static IP (Rogers doesn't offer that at all), and I have freedom to use my connection as I see fit. I host my own domain on it amongst other things."
That's your option. I would do the same as what you did if I actually lived in TO on a permanent basis and had a land line and such. But for my current setup, rogers fits the bill more nicely than something connected to a landline.
The few times that I have run a server, I just kept it on a high port and I never heard anything about it.