Canadian ISPs Fight Back, Again

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."

Comments

Goverment

[sopssa]

The large carriers had previously been required to sell access at a specific wholesale rate. If Bell and Telus can charge whatever they want, the small ISPs say, Canadians will see less competition, higher prices and slower Internet speeds.

I'd like to support the small ISP and they're being around most likely creates more competition, but I dislike goverment control like that too. Companies should be allowed to sell their services at a price they want. If its pricy for me, I need to be without it. Or pay the price they ask and get the service.

Goverment shouldn't be allowed to tell me that I'm not allowed to sell at a certain price, marketforces will do that.

If the prices will go too much up, I'm sure customers will be unhappy and there will be new ISP's taking place.

Re:Goverment

[KraftDinner]

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.)

Re:Goverment

[fredc97]

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

[BassMan449]

The thing you are missing is that the infrastructure was build with government money. The competition is unfair because the big telco "own" the networks and if you don't have the government forcing them to sell their network capacity to the smaller ISPs then they will stop selling to the ISP or sell at high rates and then sell at low rates to their customers. This will put all the smaller ISPs out of business and once they are gone the big telco can jack up their prices because they have no competition.

Re:Goverment

[fredc97]

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

[TheBilgeRat]

Monopoly, American style!

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.

Re:Goverment

[Shaman]

If I had upvotes, I'd upvote this to the moon. This is exactly correct.

Re:Goverment

[TheSpoom]

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?

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

If the prices will go too much up, I'm sure customers will be unhappy and there will be new ISP's taking place.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup welcome to the USA where we have the choice of Comcast or Verizon.

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

Goverment shouldn't be allowed to tell me that I'm not allowed to sell at a certain price, marketforces will do that.

Monopolies can prevent market forces from doing that. Market forces only work in free markets. Monopolies produce controlled markets, and the consumer loses.

This is the fundamental paradox of capitalism: all companies must perpetually compete, but none of them can ever be allowed to win.

Re:Goverment

[MightyMartian]

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.

Re:Goverment

[fredc97]

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 major city. Now only a few are left and they don't compete on price anymore. Long gone are the days of unlimited internet for 20 bucks of the modem yesteryear, now everything is metered or limited in some way and nothing you could call high speed is under 30$

Re:Goverment

[nedlohs]

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.

Re:Goverment

[KraftDinner]

I'd probably pick Verizon given their pricing and speed plans. They offer plans far superior to that of Bell, Rogers or Telus.

Re:Goverment

[wonkavader]

Wait... which is the crazy one?

Re:Goverment

[commodore64_love]

>>>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.

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you live in a rural area, where your choicess are $100/month satelite or.. nothing because a decade ago verison sued to prevent a wifi co-operative, since it would prevent them from competing (read: price-fixing) in a market they're going to enter any day now.

Re:Goverment

[commodore64_love]

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.

Re:Goverment

[Trails]

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

[TheBilgeRat]

Thus the reason for the quotations :). We Yanks still aren't using a decent measuring standard outside of scientific circles.

Re:Goverment

[CreamyG31337]

What? There is no Verizon in Canada...

Re:Goverment

[bluefoxlucid]

This is a paradox but not a flaw. All beings must attempt to survive, but none can ever be allowed to live forever (population problems and you're in your 20s at 400 years old with about 80 kids...).

Re:Goverment

[zenasprime]

Your right, companies should be allowed to sell their services at a price they want... The problem with telcos and cable companies is that we, the people (ie the government) grant these companies monopolies and allow them, and even subsidize them with tax payer money, to set up their infrastructure on our property. The telcos and cable companies do NOT own the land that they set their cables, poles, and underground pipe upon. That land is ours and we grant them right of way to use it for their business because it is in our best interest to do so. You see, just because we grant them this right of way does not mean that we no longer have a say. In fact, it is part of the deal that they are granted this monopoly because it is ultimately beneficial for us that they do so and that they have to follow the rules we set down for them if they wish to do business on our property. Simply speaking, that if they choose to do business in our communities, and we grant them right of way to lay down their lines on our property (which gives them an advantage over their competetors) that they might have to allow others to piggy back upon those right of way lines and have competition. Ultimately we let them have right of way for our own benefit. When this relationship no longer is a benefit to us, the rightful owners of the land on which they have set up their business, we have the right to not "renew their lease" if they don't wish to follow whatever new rules we set out for them. In turn, they can remove their infrastructure (cable/phone lines) from our property and take their business elsewhere.

So you see, all this is, ultimately, is two sides of a business relationship. If they do not like the rules we set out for their use of our property, they have every right to pack up and move on to greener pastures. If however, they wish to continue doing business with us, they can make the lower bid and get our business.

What I'm hoping for is wifi technology that will decentralize internet access and get rid of all these land lines that are cluttering my view. I've already discontinued cable service (I can get "TV" from online sources like hulu, iTuneMusic Store, Netflix, etc and/or buy DVDs) I don't really need cable TV programming. I get phone service from my mobile. The only line I have yet to escape is DSL which I will gladly replace with whatever wifi service becomes available in my area. Hell if it was economically feasible, I'd detach from the electric grid as well. ;)

Re:Goverment

[Tim4444]

It would be absolutely fine to ask the government to butt out if these companies hadn't been taking fat government subsidies to develop the infrastructure they need for those services. I think the government deserves to have a return (in the form of a competitive free market) on its investment. Giving select companies exclusive control over publicly funded projects means the government picked the winners instead of the free market.

Let me put it another way. If a government pays a company to build a bridge, does it mean that company should be able to charge whatever toll it wants for people to use it?

Public investment should be for the public good - not selective corporate welfare.

Re:Goverment

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Goverment shouldn't be allowed to tell me that I'm not allowed to sell at a certain price, marketforces will do that.

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.

Re:Goverment

[commodore64_love]

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.

Re:Goverment

[clarkkent09]

Not exactly correct. If the government is going to pay money to a private business (in this case in the form of infrastructure) because, presumably, it decides that to do so is in the best interest of the society, it needs to do so with a contract that spells out any rights that this business has to give up in return. No problem with that. But I don't see that just because a company has received some taxpayer money in the past, the government can step in at any time and tell it how to price its products or how to otherwise run its business.

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the heavy tax payer subsidizing that helped pay for that infrastructure?

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the record there is another company currently rolling broadband wireless across the country. 50K subs plus the same on satellite. www.xplornet.com AC because I work for them.

Re:Goverment

[compro01]

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.

Re:Goverment

[Jaysyn]

Then I hope they are paying for the public right-of-way they are most certainly using.

Re:Goverment

[Yvan256]

Don't have so many damn kids. Problem solved.

Next?

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

That really burns my brisket. A little over a year ago I told Bell to go fuck themselves and went with one of the now threatened third party ISPs.
Service on the new ISP was great, and way cheaper. I can see why Bell wants them gone.
Lord knows what I'm gonna do for internet if my ISP goes belly up. I can't go back to Bell, or Rogers.

Re:Goverment

[claq]

I imagine there has been no decent money in it for at least 10 years. The end user cost of phone and data service is probably not far above the production cost, which means these services are mere commodities, like gasoline. How many different gas companies do we need when they all sell the same thing for the same price and make the same tiny profit? When prices for data services change I'm sure it's because the production cost has changed, like gas, and not because of "gouging". Data and phone access services are so marginally profitable for the big companies that they don't even compete on customer service (again, like gas stations :). The real profit is in those things that cost comparatively little to produce, like text messaging and voice mail (or ring tones, according to Chris Rock :). This will probably be the final stage of consolidation of the data access service industry in Canada.

Yes, the infrastructure was built partially with public money through subsidies. Does that mean we, the people are forever and always entitled to do what we want with it? If that was the plan then the government should have built it. If you let a private company (i.e. not government run) build something, sorry, it's the company's property. I can get a tax break to put solar panels on my house. Do I owe you some of my electricity? No. You get a side benefit, which is (theoretically) cleaner air. We've reaped the benefit of the subsidy in that we have phone lines just about everywhere, which is something given the vast sparely populated areas of this country. (I haven't visited all of Canada so I don't know if this is literally true. There are probably people in northern communities still waiting for phone service.)

If I'm right that data and voice service is totally commoditized then the wholesale resellers aren't necessary. They either currently resell service at a price higher than it needs to be, or the wholesale price is artificially low to ensure are profitable. I'm not in favor of paying more than I need to, and I'm not in favor of things that distort prices. At this moment in 2009 I think this is a good decision.

Re:Goverment

[KraftDinner]

Sigh, I'm saying if I had a choice between Verizon or Bell/Telus/Rogers. I'm not saying I HAVE that choice. It's called a HYPOTHETICAL situation.

Re:Goverment

[KraftDinner]

Hypothetical situation. Given the choice between Verizon, Bell, Telus or Rogers and based on their price/speed plans, I would pick Verizon.....

Re:Goverment

[MightyMartian]

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.

Re:Goverment

[Archfeld]

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.

Re:Goverment

[CreamyG31337]

I see. I'd pick roadrunner, I've worked for Charter and Comcast and they were a lot worse.

Re:Goverment

[HHacim]

then the telcos shouldn't accept subsidies from the government. Also, other utilities are regulated by the government, too.

Re:Goverment

[DMUTPeregrine]

True, and without small ISP's around competition will cause price's to rise. Why, with a small ISP you might be able to negotiate a trade and pay them with apple's, orange's, or grammar nazi post's on slashdot.

Re:Goverment

[mortonda]

That's almost exactly my experience with Bell here in Kansas. :(

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, wut? You have a problem with smidges, dashes, cunthairs, and phrases like "Down the road a piece"? Which part of "Over yonder" do you not understand? You're not one of those socialist communist nazi globalization greeny freaks, are you? You sure don't sound like a good American backwoods redneck!!

Re:Goverment

[Nikker]

I completely agree with you that the governament taints business. The issue is that tax payees have been forced from day one to pay for the wiring and most of the infrastructure weather we had Internet / phone services or not. The communications industry is one that will continue to thrive for decades to come and the incentive is there to start selling they just need the wires to start selling. As a Canadian what I think we should be asking our politicians is why do we have such potiential for an industry and no one is able to join in and why are you the gate keepers. I personally believe while slightly idealisic that no o e should be able to own anything that is not on their own property. Once that cable leaves the back of the NOC it has to be owned by the people or who ever owns the soil above them. Now we pay almost $10 ontop of our monthly cell bills for the cell towers as a tax, an additional 1.5% of our cable goes to taxes as well and our infrastructure sucks. With the amount of money going into communications we should have fibre going to each house and a colo facility where any provider can set up shop. The inevitable paridigm shift is that tv, phone and Internet is now all digital and the next step is to consolidate all three into one service, this is what is making the industry panic. Instead of getting at minimum $200 / month for cell / tv / landline / Internet some 3rd party will and should claim a stake in wireless and wired communications and sell the whole thing as one for half the price of course this would kill the folks at bell and Rogers because their ARPU would be split in half. Through the 3rd partys they could offer a la cart tv serving them locally to all their customers once dowloaded from the content creator maybe even giving the residuals if the show becomes popular again in the future. Telephone service or voice communications is old as hell and could be implimented as an afterthought and internet will be the underlying protocol behind it all.

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

No, the running of the infrastructure needs to be regulated (or a co-op). The actual service should be free compete.

The people running the fibre and copper should only worry about proper investment. The people routing the packets should worry about providing the best IP service they can.

The two layers should not care about each other (besides not having crumbling infrastructure). The two layers should not be owned by the same parent corporation.

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you heard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Well if you did, you would draw different conclusions about the "recent financial crash". If it weren't for the government interventions, we would not have been in such a big trouble now.

Re:Goverment

[sarhjinian]

None of them compete with each other.

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.

Re:Goverment

[commodore64_love]

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.

Re:Goverment

[commodore64_love]

>>>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 the Supreme Court as legal).

Re:Goverment

[TheBilgeRat]

I....I...I LIKE the metric system! *sob*

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much, no, Belus in their ends of it are pretty solidly entrenched and only see any competition in a carrier that requires souls in payment and has itself the GSM/HSDPA monopoly (well, and virgin canada, which for some unexplicably daft reason uses cdma in North America)

Re:Goverment

[dryeo]

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 is a bit paranoid and likes to know who is calling) $5 a month for not making enough long distance calls. And no bundles as they all include high speed and as I'm 30 miles from Vancouver...
The gas companies also gouge. Just west of us they have a 10 cent a litre transit levy on their gas, here we don't so the gas is 3 cents cheaper. That's 7 cents extra profit a litre

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

....then you would be fired. Bell and Telus make MASSIVE amounts of money from their wholesalers. Think about it. They're basically extensions of Bell/Telus' sales forces that they don't have to pay. The larger ones have their own support desks so all those pesky users don't have to call into Bell/Telus' support groups. I work for a carrier, and we'd be hurtin' without our wholesalers.

Re:Goverment

[donnielrt]

Just wanted to say - dude, you rock!

Re:Goverment

[haruchai]

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.

Re:Goverment

[rsax]

I wish you all the best in court. The world needs more people like you.

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

Virgin Canada is owned by to Bell anyhow

Re:Goverment

[TheSpoom]

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 wholesalers' service in an extremely quick shutdown, like within one or two weeks of when most customers would have received our notification. I wouldn't give them time to send out a similar letter to people.

Effect: Much more money, many more direct customers, and zero competitors. It has the added benefit of being able to fire a majority of their Nexxus staff since the division would no longer exist, so count massive cost savings into the equation.

Re:Goverment

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me put it another way. If a government pays a company to build a bridge, does it mean that company should be able to charge whatever toll it wants for people to use it?

This example is not so far off. Outside of Toronto, the provincial government (next level down from federal) built a toll highway, then sold it. The province is still responsible for enforcing toll collection. The company is granted access to the province's license plate database, which is otherwise not allowed by the privacy act. If a car does not have a transponder, the company photographs the license plate as the car enters and leaves the highway and sends bills to the person to whom a plate is registered. The province suspends renewal of the license plate of any car whose owner does not pay the company's bills. The province is paying to expand the highway. The company will own the expansion.

Re:Goverment

[supernova_hq]

I don't know about Eastern Canada, but in the west all the providers except for Rogers used CDMA. Telus and one other company (can't remember which) is just STARTING to develop a competing GSM network. That's right, instead of sharing GSM networks with Rogers, they are building a SECOND completely REDUNDANT network just for competition reasons.

Re:Goverment

[supernova_hq]

Telus offers TV over ADSL.

Re:Goverment

[wonkavader]

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.

Bigger picture!

[Monkeedude1212]

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!

[Shaman]

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.

Re:Bigger picture!

[hidden]

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?

Re:Bigger picture!

[Beardo the Bearded]

Shaw uses the cable lines.

Telus uses phone.

Where does the cable start going through the phone?

Re:Bigger picture!

[Monkeedude1212]

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 two of them just work together on it.

Re:Bigger picture!

[Monkeedude1212]

Where does the cable start going through the phone?

As soon as it hits a Shaw building and needs to go somewhere else.

Re:Bigger picture!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shaw basically sets up a deal (not sure of the terms) so that they can provide internet access THROUGH telus' wiring.

Nope. Not quite.

Shaw is the cable television company. They provide Internet access over the coax cable that also provides your TV signal.

Telus is the phone company. They provide Internet access over the twisted pair copper wire that also provides your telephone dial tone.

However, there are lots of smaller ISP's that provide DSL connections over the wires "owned" by Telus. For example, I use a (relatively) small ISP called nucleus.com. They provide me with a DSL connection that goes over the Telus wiring infrastructure, much to the chagrin of the money-grubbing phone company.

As you may expect, the tech support you receive from the giant fat-and-lazy phone company is limited to the subvocal grunting of whatever fly-by-night offshore call centre Telus decides to outsource to this week, while the tech support from a smaller (ie local) ISP actually has a clue.

Re:Bigger picture!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had Shaw cable internet and telus ADSL, Shaw has a much bigger faster pipe. Well of course it does because its cable and not crappy ADSL...

Re:Bigger picture!

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the city. Where I live Shaw owns a fiber backbone that comes through the city that stretches all across the country and down into the US. See the network map

WARNING! ANNECDOTAL EVIDENCE BE

Never mind the fact that where I go to college they are lobbying for better fiber rollout, and trying to get the Shaw and Telus negotiators INTO THE SAME BUILDING is almost impossible, let alone the same room.

Also Telus got bitchslapped by BC Hydro (gov't power utility) because they share poles, with Shaw piggybacking on the power company's portion. Telus was tightening the wires so they could "push" Shaw off. BC Hydro stepped in when the tension was a) damaging the poles and (b) when they realized what kind of monkey business was being pulled to annoy Shaw.

Re:Bigger picture!

[fliptw]

Like say, from a cable modem via Ethernet?

Re:Bigger picture!

[CreamyG31337]

It's not going through "phone wires". More like generic fiber that can carry anything.

Re:Bigger picture!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shaw doesn't go through Telus at all.. It goes through Shaw's own infrastructure and pipes (once Bigpipe, now Shaw Business Unit).

If you actually tried running some traceroutes from a Shaw connection, you can see the their pipes till its passed off to another carriers pipe. Only time Shaw hits Telus, is if a Shaw customer hits a Telus customer.

Seriously, stop drinking Telus's punch.

Re:Bigger picture!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shaw, Bell and Telus are the top three largest optical wan network owners in Canada. Shaw has a private completely owned optical network between all the major cities. Bell owns and operates the old GT network in the west and either own in the east.

Shaw may certainly lease some fibers here and there from Telus or Bell, but they have enough right of ways that they always have the option to lay their own.

Re:Bigger picture!

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Shaw and have Telus call me every quarter to offer me poorer service for slightly less money. From my point of view they do seem to compete with each other.

Re:Bigger picture!

[compro01]

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.

Re:Bigger picture!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does the cable start going through the phone?

As soon as it hits a Shaw building and needs to go somewhere else.

Not true, Shaw has their own backbone

http://www.shaw.ca/ShawBusinessSolutions/Network+Maps/
kk

Re:Bigger picture!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shaw owns a considerable amount of infrastructure through its subsidiary, Big Pipe.

http://www.logicalhosting.ca/index.php?mode=ournetwork

Re:Bigger picture!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're stupid, look up 'Big Pipe Inc', a Shaw subsidiary (It's possibly been renamed "Shaw Business Solutions" now).

Here's a map of the wholly-Shaw owned fiber backbone -- not sure if the red lines are Shaw's, but the rest certainly are. One of my friends used to spend a lot of time out in the bush, getting dropped off by helicopters with a lot of bear spray, surveying back when parts of this were deployed.

Re:Bigger picture!

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Shaw doesn't use Telus infrastructure at any point. I'm sure they peer with Telus at various local exchanges, but they have their own cross country fibre network.

Re:Bigger picture!

[shutdown -p now]

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 it may be atypical experience.

Re:Bigger picture!

[Pat69]

Wow, are you ever wrong. Shaw and Telus share NO infrastructure. Only place you might see them using the same wiring is inside a customer's house: Shaw customer with phone services or Telus customer with television services.

Re:Bigger picture!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.shaw.ca/ShawBusinessSolutions/ - Shaw owns their own Fiber.

Re:Bigger picture!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tax money put the lines there. Where I live, Shaw *DOES* own their own cables, although they are on poles shared with power and phone lines. Tax money put the poles there. The two companies are not competitive. They are in collusion. There are other continents (Europe, Asia) where prices are lower and speed is a lot faster. There are no services where there are no people (or very limited). The government has their own networks, which are a lot (A LOT) faster than what these guys provide. The two big carriers argue 'the infrastructure is ours", but no, the infrastructure was put there by tax dollars. I am disappointed that there is so little competition in this marketplace. They claim to want to be competitive, but throttle bandwidth on a per-user basis. There is still a certain amount of net neutrality in place, but they certainly have enough bandwidth to push TV over the networks they claim are being overused by p2p. AND DAMMIT TO HELL, THERE IS NO P2P IN THE WORLD THAT HOGS BANDWIDTH LIKE 20 HI DEF TV CHANNELS! And yes, it all runs over that same network. Go figure.

Re:Bigger picture!

[Pyrus.mg]

As you may expect, the tech support you receive from the giant fat-and-lazy phone company is limited to the subvocal grunting of whatever fly-by-night offshore call centre Telus decides to outsource to this week, ...

Actually a lot of their tech support is the subvocal grunting of fly-by-government-job-creation-subsidies Atlantic Canadian call centres. Same with a smaller proportion of AT&T and Sprint's.

Articles like this make Slashdot great.

[spammeister]

I had a passing interest of the issues at large and I find this decision disturbing, considering our tax dollars paid for this service in the first place!

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:Articles like this make Slashdot great.

[taylortbb]

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).

Re:Articles like this make Slashdot great.

[hurfy]

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 only 640k and i know qwest will mess something up (and add interleaving) if i upgrade (err...downgrade if you watch the ping times) but 5 times the download would be handy now.

Re:Articles like this make Slashdot great.

[taylortbb]

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.

Re:Articles like this make Slashdot great.

[rs79]

"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 and fan out.

No, it's a monopoly.

[wonkavader]

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.

Dear Canada, welcome to our world!

[dltaylor]

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!

Re:Dear Canada, welcome to our world!

[Monkeedude1212]

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!

[TheSpoom]

TekSavvy (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.

Re:Dear Canada, welcome to our world!

[scarboni888]

I'm using TekSavvy & they offer me a static IP for an extra $4 a month along with the right to SERVE information back up my pipe.

Rogers & Bell explicitly state 'thou shalt not run a server of any kind without paying for a business account' and "what's a static IP?"

This is the beginning of the end of the internet as anything other than glorified television. Actually the beginning of the end was more likely with asynchronous upload/download speeds but we're well on our way now, aren't we?

Re:Dear Canada, welcome to our world!

[Anonymous Coward]

I use velcom the other provider with MLPPP and they where the best provider here (teksavy is not available in quebec....)

Re:Dear Canada, welcome to our world!

[Idiomatick]

Same here :/ ... once I had a problem and when I got a rep they didn't ask me questions like 'is the power on and is it plugged in'. Also they rickrolled me w/ the waiting music.

Re:Dear Canada, welcome to our world!

[camperdave]

teksavy is not available in quebec...

You may want to double check that.

Re:Dear Canada, welcome to our world!

[inhuman_4]

I am also a Teksavvy customer and I have been most impressed with their service.

I switched to them from Rogers, and oh boy what a difference!

Let me give you a breakdown of my experience:

Techsupport:
    Teksavvy - Employed by teksavvy, lives in Canada, speaks english, knows whats they are doing.
    Rogers - Employed by ???, lives in Asia, speaks gibberish, reads a script.

Service Quality:
    Teksavvy - Few breakdowns, always give notice of outage for repairs.
    Rogers - Constantly having problems, no notice of outages.

Cost:
    Teksavvy - $42/Month 5M/800k 200BG limit (unlimited available).
    Rogers - $58/Month 6M/800k 60GB limit ("upgraded" me from my unlimited account).

Teksavvy is always sending me email to try and get me to petition the CRTC to get Bell to remove traffic shaping, and other things they do to mess with the smaller ISPs.

Rogers sent me a letter complaining that I was abusing my unlimited service. Then they upgraded me to a new plan that cost more and provided less. I called to have my old service back and they said it didn't exist anymore.

BTW, teksavvy is the only company I have ever considered buying swag from. Not because what they deliver is amazing, but because in a market where every ISP offers the same stuff, they are the only ones who actually deliver.

Re:Dear Canada, welcome to our world!

[agnosticnixie]

There's a slight latency hit because they're entirely based in Ontario, but they do serve in at least Montreal.

Re:Dear Canada, welcome to our world!

[Anonymous Coward]

I see MTS on the list of ISPs in the link in TFA.. That is not a small company. Same for Primus.

http://www.google.ca/finance?q=mbt

That's a 2-3 billion company. Of course, they will retain their customers in Manitoba but still..

Re:Dear Canada, welcome to our world!

[Anonymous Coward]

What does this have to do with TekSavvy in particular? You must be so proud.

Then why do Telcos "own" the networks?

[maillemaker]

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?

[TheSpoom]

Corruption and lobbying.

Re:Then why do Telcos "own" the networks?

[BassMan449]

Exactly. The government gave them subsidies to build the network, but the big telco lobby is a powerful one and they got the language inserted that guaranteed they own the networks. I personally think since the infrastructure was build with government money it should be owned by the people and just considered public infrastructure. Unfortunately the telcos have a lot more money then me to send to Congress and so the people lose that fight.

Re:Then why do Telcos "own" the networks?

[clarkkent09]

How do the telcos own the infrastructure?

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.

Re:Then why do Telcos "own" the networks?

[Rue C Koegel]

u mean why aren't we a socialist society? because we are a capitalist one!

socialism doesn't mean Nazi, National Socialism, or Stalinist Communism; your local co-op is a perfect example of a successful use of socialist ideas. i prefer to refer to those ideas as Co-Operational, and myself as a Co-Operative, in order to avoid the misconception that socialism is bad for you: but they're the same thing non-the-less.

Re:Then why do Telcos "own" the networks?

[Anonymous Coward]

The deal was, the big Telcos and Cablecos were given a monopoly in exchange for running a line, for free, to anyone any ware that asked for it. This was all over with before I was born but that's how we got to this point....

Re:Then why do Telcos "own" the networks?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the infrastructure was built with government money, why doesn't the infrastructure belong to the government?

Lobbying does all sorts of unjust things.

Re:Then why do Telcos "own" the networks?

[dryeo]

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.

I swear to you

[e-scetic]

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.

Re:I swear to you

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't possibly be worse than Telus. I mean, you'd actually have to practice working on being evil to be worse than Telus.

Telus sucks. It's true!

Re:I swear to you

[Anonymous Coward]

What you describe sounds like Videotron. When I moved to Ontario, they owed me money. Then they changed their mind and said *I* owed them money. They tried to do the same to friends of mine who moved or switched to Bell for Internet/TV.

Been with Rogers for a while now. Broadband is fine - in fact they've doubled the speed in 3 years with only a small increase in the cost of the Internet connection. Can't really complain about them now that they've stopped harassing me with cell phone offers. :)

Re:I swear to you

[Gramie2]

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!

Re:I swear to you

[Monkeedude1212]

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 just cancel it when the plan is up" And I tried this with about 3 other phone calls all getting the same response. So when the day came that my plan was up, I called in, and customer service wasn't available I must have missed their operation hours. I call IMMEDIATELY the next day as soon as they were open - and they wanted to charge me for an extra month.

I wasn't even calling them ON that Cell phone, that cell phone was out of use for at least 3 weeks.

Seriously, I didn't mind Bell when everything was up and running, but if you wanted to change ANYTHING (even something simple like your billing address) they were by far the worst I've ever dealt with, even Worse then Telus, and thats saying something.

Re:I swear to you

[Palmateer]

Actually, I've found that even though Bell (cellular) screws up the billing occasionally, and they often don't understand their own policies once you get them on the phone. I've been able to get them see things my way, eventually, every time (I've been with them for almost 7 years). Sometimes it took a two hour phone call, but they always made it right. In comparison, when I used Rogers as my cell provider I went through the same hoops but never, not a single time, got issues resolved to my satisfaction. I still hate Bell though for the games they're playing here. With a license to raise prices for the wholesale customers as much as they like as long as they charge their retail customers the same, they likely don't care if they lose all their DSL customers. That way they won't be using the pesky VOIP and internet television services which are eating into their REALLY profitable businesses - satellite tv and POTS/long distance.

Re:I swear to you

[Cassini2]

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 installed on our computers." I finally got them to type in "tracert" at the command line. At that point, they admitted they mysteriously had to leave the phone ... I seem to remember being hung up on, and never getting a call back.

The Bell outgoing email server routinely fucks up. I am pretty sure that they are tweaking the anti-spam settings, and either delete or delay the customer's email messages. Magically, my home internet connection, and all my business customers internet connections, simultaneously loose outbound email for 2 to 3 days. Then it all comes back again. Bell technical support insists the problem is that we use ThunderBird and Microsoft Outlook. Only Microsoft Outlook Express is supported on Bell's network.

Bell Technical Support is so inept: "Bell does not allow them to install any software including Microsoft Outlook Express on there computers." The next time you are trying to debug an email problem with Bell, always remember that you are talking to a person not allowed to use any email software whatsoever. Bell Tech support is only allowed Webmail.

Some of the business types are undoubtedly thinking: Why don't you stop using crappy ADSL lines, and spend $1800/month on a partial T1? Firstly, $1800/month is a significant amount of money to be spending on Internet services, especially in comparison to an $80/month business ADSL line. Secondly, I have spent that much money on fancy Bell Lines. Bell can mess them up too!

Simply put, having ISP's other than Rogers and Bell is vital for Canada's competitiveness. It's called "Bell Hell" for a reason.

Re:I swear to you

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too. Had dryloop DSL for 2 years, then got wise and moved to the TekSavvy version of same 4 months ago.

Just last week they finally agreed to stop trying to bill me, even though I had left.

Thanks Bell!

Re:I swear to you

[CreamyG31337]

I've never heard of anyone calling anywhere for technical or billing help and actually getting good support. Maybe back in the days before call centers and outsourcing, but it's pretty much impossible now. It's pretty much related to profit -- the companies are too cheap to allow agents to receive proper training, working computer systems, and time to properly research issues and call customers back. I actually worked in an outsourced call center for 5 years and the only contract that I worked on that didn't have this problem initially was HP computers. They did write me up for replacing a broken modem once (I checked into it later and the customer confirmed that was the problem) but at least they did try to let us do our job without too much harassment. It's just sad that we were probably overall doing a mediocre job at replacing the American workers, and they eventually replaced us with Indians that definitely were not qualified at all. Anyways, the problem is always the same -- communication between the local office or engineers or whatever and the people that answer the phones is always terrible. People answering the phone have more incentive to lie to get rid of you than to spend time fixing difficult issues. The difficult issues of course only exist because of poor communication and training. And of course management is done completely wrong, so nothing ever gets "better".
Example of Shaw sucking at communication: I had to replace my PVR twice because the first two came with a Western Digital drive that, due to a firmware bug, reported an incorrect temperature and shut down (froze) the box. The fact that I could find this out after searching on Google for 10 minutes, yet nobody at Shaw could understand this was quite pathetic. I talked to two people in "tech support" and the technician that came to my house. Finally lucked out and got one with a Seagate drive. I actually called them today to cancel my service because it's a rip-off, they seem to have local support. They were trying to convince me that they were adding new features to the box so I should keep it. "Soon you'll be able to add an external hard drive!". Funny because the box I just bought from Bell (satellite) for $300 less does that too, plus the Shaw box would have if they just left the stock firmware alone. Incidentally, they also apparently cripple the firmware on my modem so that I can't view the status page to check the power levels. God I hate them.
I have Rogers for my cellphone and they suck about as bad as Bell for billing issues. They once charged me $16 in data fees to download a game (doom rpg) from their website even after I asked and made sure they wouldn't charge data fees for a purchase from their wap site. Then they neglected to charge me the actual $5 for the game itself, so I assume id never got paid. Every time I call them, it's at least 20 minutes of holding and being transferred around between the same departments, and accidentally getting hung up on or transferred to closed departments. I'm pretty sure they also buy all Nokia's broken phones for their customers since the last two phones I got and unlocked with a stock firmware turned into crashing pieces of shit.
Telus? They're pretty dumb too. I got a box with a modem in the mail from them the other day, and nobody in the last 5 years at my address has had the name it was addressed to. My friend used to have their ADSL service there. They forced him to downgrade the speed because he wanted to try their TV service. That didn't work properly due to packet loss, so he canceled it, and then they wouldn't give him his faster Internet back because "they were out of ports".

Re:I swear to you

[TheSpoom]

I'm pretty sure Bell outsources most of their tech support to India and/or the Philippines nowadays, so, y'know, progress.

Re:I swear to you

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Bell shareholder I am appalled by the level of gross incompetence in almost every level of the company. I no longer use any Bell services and have shares in the damn company, it got so bad that one day after 15 calls regarding a bill that had been paid almost 2 weeks prior (and reported to them on several occasions) I canceled everything. To make a long story short I was accused of stealing Bell equipment (sat TV receivers), not returning DSL equipment and having to pay 3 months worth of bills because of some contract I signed 5 years ago.
Anyways a call the the executive office of the vice president got every all sorted out. This is a special department setup to deal with all the nasty screw ups from their call centres. If you every end up in Bell Hell give this department a call.

Re:I swear to you

[CodeBuster]

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 impossible regulations.

Re:I swear to you

[tixxit]

That's exactly why we need to support these small ISPs. I use MNSi (leases Bell's lines) here. You call for technical support and you get it. No waiting on the line or anything. These companies are filling a gaping hole and filling it well. It would be a damn shame if they were put out of business, especially if I am left with Bell.

Re:I swear to you

[hysma]

I'm pretty sure they also buy all Nokia's broken phones for their customers since the last two phones I got and unlocked with a stock firmware turned into crashing pieces of shit.

So you hack the phone and then it starts crashing? Maybe it's because the software you load is buggy?

Re:I swear to you

[CreamyG31337]

It's the official nokia firmware I installed. You're not supposed to do that because Rogers wants your phone to play stupid screensavers and startup screens from them. Fuck them, I say.

Re:I swear to you

[hysma]

Yes, I agree in terms of what's your right and all, but it's very possible they crippled the hardware, too, and your stock firmware can't deal with those changes.

Re:I swear to you

[CreamyG31337]

Yeah, that's what I mean. I am guessing since it works fine but crashes randomly once a day when doing memory intensive stuff, nokia supplied rogers with phones that don't run at full cpu or memory speed. the rogers firmware probably underclocks them. either that or nokia just makes shit phones that crash all the time...

Re:I swear to you

[juniorkindergarten]

I was moving (NEVER use UHAUL) and informed Bell of the move. They said no problem. On the day of the move my old line was cut and I plugged in the phone at the new location and it didn't work.

Big surprise there.
I called up Bell repair and told them of the problem, to which I was told "didn't you know we're on strike?" No, not really. Then I was told it would be no more than a week, as management was doing the repairs.
Meanwhile Rogers had been and gone and my cable and internet were working great.

After a couple of weeks of hassling bell for phone service and the queue going from a week to a month to at least 3-4 months, I told them to forget it at got Vonage that afternoon.

Been a very happy Vonage customer ever since.

Re:I swear to you

[sarhjinian]

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 some tales:
* I watched a Bell technician randomly unplugging fibre in Toronto's hospital district to test a problem. Just randomly unplugging shit in the middle of the day. No warning, no call to the customers, just *yank*
* I watched a Bell technician get formally ejected from a downtown building for belligerence. Twice.
* Bell Nexxia service desk employees didn't seem to know about a *fucking street collapsing* in western Canada. Oh, no, it must be my equipment.
* I've sat across the table from a VP of customer service and a managing director and been directly lied to about incidents. When I called them on it (eg, when I started recording conversations my operators had with Nexxia staff) they grudgingly admitted to doing dick-all
* I went through four sales reps in three years. They all quit after support failed to install lines as promised. Oh, did I mention the MPLS rollout and the 10% success rate?
* Mapping frame DLCIs for other people's networks into mine.
* Random billing errors. We're not talking minor ones, either: they dropped ten years worth of PBX rental (for equipment at a building we hadn't occupied for ten years) on us in one, million-dollar shot. Another time our WAN bill went up more than twelve-fold for no good reason.
* As for billing: did you know Bell's billing systems have no link whatsoever to the services they provide you? None. Ther have no real change-management system, either: if you ask questions about how your network is configured versus what your bill says they'll admit they have no fucking clue.

And that's all premium, highly-paid, non-Bangalore staff. Bell is comically bad: it's a balkanized, badly-structured company made of all sort of autonomous divisions that don't talk. Morale among employees is terrible, and anyone who's been there more than a short time is certainly a Peter Principle example in practice. The other ex-Stentors (Telus, Aliant, MTS) are a bit better (Telus is the worst, MTS/Allstream is the best, mostly by virtue of how good the Allstream people were, but MTS seems to be dragging them down) but not much. Rogers less incompetent, but much nastier.

** Nexxia was so bad they "reorganized" into Bell Advanced Technical Services or somesuch several years ago. It's still the same useless pieces of shit doing the same work.

Re:I swear to you

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah woah, you got something wrong there. A partial T1 for $1800? Where do you live? Recently, I've seen a T1 line going for less $400. I've seen partial T1s for less than two hundred a month.

If you have a business that heavily depends on Internet connectivity, a T1 might be worth it.

Re:I swear to you

[GravityStar]

Phones? Telephone calls to cancel a service? No way. Signed, sealed and delivered mail works just fine. "Dear FuckCorp, I'm giving you notice that I, John Doe, cancel renewal of service Fubar. Yours sincerely, Asshat."
Some of the advantages;
The postoffice gives you documentation that your mail was delivered _and_ accepted.
They can't make you wait on hold.
They don't get to make you jump through hoops ("noooo, you need to call department Y, this is department Z").

Seriously though, any reason why you didn't fire of a mail?

Re:I swear to you

[Cassini2]

The $1800/month number was from a number of years ago, and it was for a specialized (non-internet) dedicated connection. I was forbidden from attempting to negotiate a better rate. Apparently, Bell caused the U.S. office so many difficulties, that everyone refused to make any changes on the line for fear of Bell.

I know, we were being ripped off. However, if an entire factory depends on that T1, what are you going to do?

Re:I swear to you

[Anonymous Coward]

I completely agree with you and I unfortunately work for bell business internet. (outsourced call center for the french calls) Fortunately for the french, bell business customers, we have competent techs and even more competent supervisors, but even then, everyday we have to fight against the policies and procedures that bell has in place, in order for us to provide decent customer service. It's ridiculous but we try our best.

Re:Slashdots slashdots great articles like this

[beckett]

sheesh we've already crashed the pathetic competitivebroadband.com server. either that or the ASP script sucks. HOW DO I MAKE A DIFFERENCE NOW?

Letting it die?

[Anonymous Coward]

* If the small ISP's don't offer anything beyond what Bell and Telus offer why not let it die?
* Also consider that municipalities may become the ISP and own the fibre infrastructure, then there would be no need for private enterprises doing the same.

Re:Letting it die?

[MightyMartian]

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 all the grants and other ways in which the taxpayer's largesse has allowed you to profit over the years."

Re:Letting it die?

[TheSpoom]

But they do. Check out the reviews of TekSavvy on DSLreports. 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.

Re:Letting it die?

[ph]

... and the way they'd pay back the government? Raise prices, of course!

Re:Letting it die?

[vurg]

Those are fanboy reviews. I'm on Teksavvy. The service is good but not that all perfect.

Re:Letting it die?

[camperdave]

If I were the CRTC I would say that all infrastucture is now the property of the crown, and every ISP and phone company gets charged the same rate for access.

Re:Letting it die?

[TheSpoom]

I never said they were perfect. They're a shit-ton better than Bell though.

Re:Letting it die?

[KraftDinner]

I can confirm their vastly superior uptimes/speeds/support. I've had both Bell and I currently have Teksavvy.

Re:Letting it die?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is far worse than just that. The telcos have managed to get an exclusive government granted monopoly on so called 'rights of way' in practice this makes them the only groups that can lay cable within cities. They also have exclusive government granted monopolies on wireless spectrum. Even ignoring the issue that taxpayers payed for the network build out - it is completely impossible for anyone to compete with them because of the lack of right of way access.

In Canada it really is true that the government paid for all of this. Until quite recently the teclos were entirely government owned crown corporations. Tax payers literally paid for everything. They were privatized, then went about amalgamating. The western ones BcTel, AGT and MTS became Telus and the eastern ones became Bell. http://www.abheritage.ca/telephone/era/agt.html

The truth is, in todays world a crown corporation should be running a data network service that can connect a subscriber to a provide over a single high speed in-city network. That company should have the government mandate to provide increasing raw bandwidth from city buildings to a hand off interchange point(s). What happens after that hand off can be a private company, but the in-city cabling data infrastructure should be owned by a crown corp. Ditto for wireless. We now have the technology to do this.

Re:Letting it die?

[Anonymous Coward]

Switching from bell to Teksavvy in a few days (had to wait a whole month to cancel - stupid policy). A while back I had a chat with Bell about my internet, and I was able to convince them to increase my speed. After that I've been suspicious that they throttle all lines, blaming it on location/distance. With Teksavvy I should get same, if note better service for ~60% the price. According to them it would be cheaper, if Bell charged them less.

Re:Letting it die?

[camperdave]

If the small ISP's don't offer anything beyond what Bell and Telus offer why not let it die?

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, 10M/1M cable. Chances are they don't allow servers either. Unfortunately, their website is experiencing technical difficulties now, so I can't tell. I doubt they're linux friendly, though.

Frankly, I don't know what I'm going to do if this goes through and Teksavvy closes shop. Either pony up the extra dough, or go without internet (like that would ever happen).

Is this going to affect third party phone companies as well? I was thinking of switching to Teksavvy for my phone service as well.

Re:Letting it die?

[sarhjinian]

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 and support staff at both companies reminds me of what it must be like to teach kindergarten.

Re:Letting it die?

[Idiomatick]

No, it won't affect phone services. But i don't know that techsavvy is flexible enough to survive losing their main product.

Re:Letting it die?

[sayfawa]

I'm also on Teksavvy. I get 200GB/month, and, as far as I've seen on the torrents, 500kB/s. Compare that with what I used to have at the same price, Rogers, with a 25GB/month cap and absolute maximum of 120kB/s. And there's no way in hell someone can convince me that any company's service (who likes money, anyway) can be worse than Rogers.

Re:Letting it die?

[Xoron101]

I sure hope it doesn't affect home phone service. I have mine with Teksavvy (along with my DSL) and I'm quite happy. Long distance in North America for $20 flat a month. And on top of that, really good rates to Europe (as cheap as most calling cards, but without the stupid rules that eat away the remaining balance).

Re:Letting it die?

[camperdave]

I sure hope it doesn't affect home phone service. I have mine with Teksavvy (along with my DSL) and I'm quite happy.

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.

Re:Letting it die?

[Xoron101]

Well that truly sucks. Maybe time to consider VOIP phone service. I really do not want to have to deal with Bell again.

Re:Letting it die?

[camperdave]

You still need the IP part of VOIP for it to work, so you'd be stuck with Rogers/Shaw. I am considering an in person visit with my MP.

Telus - only SEMF can describe their support

[Anonymous Coward]

A quick GIS search will turn up lots of Telus horror stories. I've lots of my own working for a IT support company. Good old Telus and their "Static Dynamic DCHP" and their idiotic routing resulted in regular downtimes for businesses we supported. So, we would move them to Shaw. Sometimes that was better, but not by much. Telus support? In most cases, worse than useless. The only way I could describe their support was to coin a new phrase to describe their helpdesk people:

S**T Eating Monkey F**kers

I hate Telus with the passion of a thousand exploding stars.

Pluralizing with an Apostrophe?

[andrewd18]

Me fail English? That's unpossible!

Seriously... it's "ISPs" not "ISP's".

Re:Pluralizing with an Apostrophe?

[canajin56]

Using an apostrophe to pluralize a number, acronym, or capital letter is a style choice, and perfectly acceptable, even if some people dislike it. Using an apostrophe to pluralize a lower case letter is mandatory, as is using it to pluralize capital letters in certain situations. For example "As are the highest grade" is flat out wrong, because it's confusing and also stupid. I dislike using "As" instead of "A's" anywhere, because it still looks bad, even if the capitalization isn't really ambigious when it isn't at the start of a sentence. Similarly, it is never acceptable to say "Mind your ps and qs." "ISP's" is acceptable, even if you don't like it. Especially in modern times, where people have started putting lower case letters into acronyms "GImP" for example. Without an apostrphe, you cannot distinguish from an acrynym ending in a lower case s, and one where the s is pluralizing it! Finally, "In the 1990's" instead of "In the 1990s" is also an acceptable style choice, and not incorrect.

Re:Pluralizing with an Apostrophe?

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't get the memo? An apostrophe now means "I'm about to type the letter s."

Re:Pluralizing with an Apostrophe?

[value_added]

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. Or seek to justify them.

Then again, maybe you write for your own amusement and not for the benefit of the reader.

stop the never ending struggle

[Deadplant]

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?

Re:stop the never ending struggle

[Giltron]

Mod parent up. I totally think this would be the ideal solution. The more immediate answer would be to SPLIT UP these Telco's wholesale and retail businesses. Let Bell Sympatico internet be a completely separate company from the wholesale business. Let Bell Sympatico etc buy access at the same price that Techsavvy does. It is a conflict of interest to be your own retail arm, and the gatekeeper for any other competing retailers.

Re:stop the never ending struggle

[GravityStar]

I know nothing of Canadian politics. Sorry. But aren't there representatives calling for the cleanly chopped off, fresh, blood spattered heads of the CRTC bosses? Isn't anyone being called to some house of Parliament for a six-day, no bathroom break, questioning?

I'm in the EU, and just as a counter-example, our Nation's equivalent of the CRTC does the exact opposite, mandating (relatively low) inter-telecommunication company pricing for access to physical lines.

A factor is also the steady and significant EU pressure to open any public service markets with companies that recieve, have recieved or have somehow benefited from state support. (Mail, telecom, energy,...)

Re:stop the never ending struggle

[Anonymous Coward]

Layer 2 (maybe even layer 1) service to every building as a public service.

Paid for by.......?

It would be future-proof because the fibre has effectively unlimited capacity.

No, it most certainly doesn't.

Please go back to your accounting job and NEVER, EVER try to talk 'networking' again. Please.

Re:stop the never ending struggle

[Anonymous Coward]

Layer 2 (maybe even layer 1) service to every building as a public service.

Paid for by.......?

Wow, I don't know what to say to that...
Don't you know what a public service is and how they are financed?
You can look it up on the Internet.

It would be future-proof because the fibre has effectively unlimited capacity.

No, it most certainly doesn't.

Please go back to your accounting job and NEVER, EVER try to talk 'networking' again. Please.

Yes it IS effectively unlimited.
Do you know anything about fibre networking?
Or do you just not know what 'effectively unlimited' means?
A single pair of strands can run full duplex gigabit with gear that costs a few hundred bucks.
Expensive gear (which will eventually be a few hundred bucks) can run it at 40Gb/s.
Experimental gear can run it at hundreds of gigabits per second.
WDM and DWDM multiplies that by 8 or 64 or more.
A cable will have at least a few dozen strands.

That is today's tech.
I'm not sure if anyone has determined the theoretical max speed but it surely exceeds all of today's combined internet traffic.

Go back to pretending to know about other stuff and don't talk about networking again.

Letter of appology from Telus

[cdn-programmer]

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 told them where they were.

What happened next? I was told it was going to cost me $1400!

I had no choice. I agreed to this.

So a tech came around. I have this on film! I set up a camera and I filmed him! He spent 1 hour. He had to unscrew 14 nuts and open a canister and snip a wire. So I figure Telus wanted to charge me $100 per nut!

After he did this the DSL fired up and ran perfectly!

A month later I got a call from one of Telus's supervisors. He asked me how it is that my DSL works! So I provided free consulting and told him if they snip such and such wires and get themselves a TDR then they can get their DSL services working!

Meanwhile I was in touch with their offices about that $1400 bill for 1 hour of work.

It was about 9 months later that I was in Brisbane. In that 9 month period of time even though Telus told me they would review the bill... they never did. I got a call from Calgary. The phones were being shut off! Telus had already disconnected one line in fact!

I called Telus from Brisbane and managed to get one of the executive assistants. I advised her she could save her company a lot of money. She had a choice. She could listen to me now and get my telephone line reconnected and get the bill reviewed and if she failed to do this then my next phone call was going to be to my lawyers in Calgary and we will get a court order and Telus will pay for it! Guess what - it worked. They reconnected the line. Meanwhile they did reduce the bill so I had to pay them something like $400 for them to fix the line so DSL would work!

Imagine! They want to offer a service they want to charge for and the customer has to show them how to do it and pay something like $400 for an hour's work on top of it! Insane!

That is just part of it.

A few years later I was billed more than $3000 in overcharges. They wouldn't answer their phones. I went through investor relations. IR does answer phones! I found their legal department. I wrote lawyer like nasty letters. I offered to sue them and pointed out that if I file - then we get discovery and in discovery they have to cough up the accounting and justify their billing. Maybe he might want to do this outside of a court action because if he doesn't then he will have to do it as part of a court action.

I got some results. They refunded about $3000.

On this matter I never ever received a correct billing statement from that company!

These days? I will not deal with that company.

It was a nightmare!

ISP's

[mcgrew]

The ISP's what fight back? Kdawson and jenningsthecat (and the New York Times as well), meet Bob.

ISP is an acronym, not a contraction.

</pedant>

WISP

[flyingfsck]

The WISP space ( microwave backhaul) is still very under-served in Canada. In Calgary, Terago has only two towers - one is too low (on a hotel) and the other one on the CPP hill is overloaded. Hopefully this will improve things. Cables are so 20th Century.

Re:WISP

[jewps]

Too bad its quite expensive either way. In Vancouver, there is Prime Signal and Metrobridge as well as Terago. They're all about the same price except Metrobridge, they have a package which uses Cogent bandwidth.

Oblig. Slade

[mcgrew]

Wait... which is the crazy one?

Don't stop now, come on
Another drop now, come on
That's why
That's why
I say Maaa mama we're all crazy now!

Experienced this first hand

[JuSTCHiLLiN]

Telus denied the muncipality I work for access to an unloaded copper pair sighting the CRTC ruling. We wanted the line so we could put our own dsl devices at the end points, one at city hall and the other at the remote office. Instead of letting us do this, Telus suggested we use business adsl and use vpn. Great idea, it's only quadruple the price, runs over the Internet, and is factor of ten times slower due to the low bandwidth they offer and the encyption. That's that or go on their managed service for ~$500 or more a month. What irks me the most is they will give us the line but they will go out of their way to load it so it's unusable for dsl. I should just see if I could grease a tech $50 to unload it for us.

ASPX? What?

[Yvan256]

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?

Re:ASPX? What?

[scarboni888]

Yup.

"Competition"? Markets are evil, remember?

[John Hasler]

> 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.

This is interesting

[KingPin27]

I live in Southern Alberta and was a former user of Telus phone/internet services. I lost my nerve on dealing with Telus when this happened. My mother in law told me one day she got a call from a Telus employee in their customer relations department telling them that they are now offering 4Mbit service in "her area" now for 39.95 cdn/Month -- perfect because she was getting 1.5Mbit before for about the same price -- I WAS EXCITED because I too was using Telus and was getting the 1.5Mbit service for the 39.95 / Month.

I haply called Telus billing and requested said service --- the answer was that it was not available in "my area" but I could continue to use the 1.5Mbit service and pay $39.95 cdn/Month for it --- I WAS FLABBERGASTED!!! SERIOUSLY -- I was getting much less service than new customers and paying the same price as they are for this newer service, sure I understand that not all equipment and lines can be upgraded at the same time but WHAT THE HECK! I lost it on the poor agent who then told me that they could reduce my bill by 5$ / month if i agreed to sign a 2 year contract!! at that point i completely lost it and cancelled my service on the spot.

I've been using Shaw since then and have been getting 7.5Mbit and using their home phone service with relatively little trouble. The techs i've had out to do work on the lines have been prompt and efficient (aside from snipping off all of my F connectors on my lines and replacing them with "shaw standard" connectors).

Interestingly enough I find myself now faced with moving out of the city I am in and moving to a rural community not serviced by Shaw and now am having to resort to using Telus again!! WHY WHY WHY!!!!! End Rant

Re:Slashdots slashdots great articles like this

[spammeister]

OK, I append my title to say "Articles like this make slashdot great, which then make the articles not so great..."

Emailing Elected Officials does little

[Anonymous Coward]

The CRTC is not a political organization. It works at arms length from Parliament. You can email the MPs but they will tell you there isn't much they can do because they do not directly influence what happens at the committee.

Going Backwards

[mrops]

Seriously... CRTC is so corrupt and full of ex-bell executives its not even funny. When FCC is pushing net neutrality, CRTC is stifling competition. I bet this will go through and I will be paying through my nose for internet. 3 cheers to Conservative in power, please slow down progress, I want my 1800's back.

Bad news, good news

[francisstp]

Markets have a way to circumvent these monopolies. It's called innovation. Wanna bet that 20 million dissatisfied broadband Internet customers are a tremendous incentive for smaller companies to offer a wireless Internet solution? Or something new altogether? Investment in alternative technologies will without a doubt increase if Bell and Telus don't allow competitors to have their slice of profits.

The real question is:

[Anonymous Coward]

Where can I get one of these locking cookie jars? Wouldn't I be able to circumvent the lock by breaking the jar - and would that run me afoul of the DMCA (Delicious Mouthwatering Cookie Act)?

Wow, you guys have a DUOpoly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Must be nice having a choice.

Northwestel, service provider for much of upper BC, the Yukon, NWT and Nunavut, controls the phone lines, cable, dial-up/cable/satelelite internet AND cellphones (through Bell). Rates and bandwidth limits are arbitrarily fixed for different areas, in which the infrastructures were purchased form the government for a dollar, back when that was allowed.

10gigs for $80. Awesome...

Buy a clue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys, it's plane and simple. Internet doesn't generate enough revenue to pay for the infrastructure. People need to shut up or dish out capitol to start their own ISP's and start laying down their own fiber, buying gear and paying millions for support contracts.

all the little ISPs....

[zogger]

...should get together and explore the feasibility of banding together in a co-op and see how feasible an all wireless network might be, wifi to microwave bridges to..WiMax to...got no idea, "wireless", I'll let the wireless gurus here fill in those blanks (or shoot it down, this is just an idea).

    I get a canopy connection here and it is *some* miles from the tower and I am in a little stream valley with really crappy to non existent "line of sight" and I still connect at least a lot better than dialup, and it works. Not perfect, not blazing fast like some folks get, but dang, can actually get linux isos now and so on. I waited YEARS for any sort of telco or cable company to offer something, and nyet, they ain't interested, despite living on a two lane blacktop that really isn't that far out of their regular "service" area for cable or DSL, like a mile or so too far so they just don't care about it. But this wireless works now after a few hiccups and thanks to those techs, customer service in spades setting this up for me, and they are getting my loot now, and not the dialup and telco (at least directly). Comes in roughly half price what I was paying previously, added plus goodness there.

    Maybe it is possible on an even larger geographical area and a more cooperative scale (hundreds of smaller local ISPs and independent customers, etc), given there might be so many customers who would be more than happy to have a bridging tower AP thing set up out in the back 40 for a freebie connection maybe..

    I know eventually *some place* in this theoretical wireless co-op scenario they have to tap into the main backbones, but maybe a few legs of the wireless could cross the border into the US where they could do that, or the coop could run a few private fiber lines? Something like that. Then all these ISPs (and maybe some more customers like a lot of little burgs and villages, etc) could just completely bypass those two monopolies.

Now I don't think any *one* wireless tech would work for the whole shebang, but maybe a combination of what is out there now might help get it established.

summary is incorrect, issue is more complex

[Chirs]

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.

On the other hand, the regulated monopolies have rights-of-way obtained from the government that the third-party ISPs don't, giving them a substantial advantage in terms of installing new fiber or cable.

So, it's a complicated issue, much more so than the summary suggests.

What about the Country Folks

[lonestarw]

My Brother is in the Country and the only ISP is a small niche provider giving him ADSL or wireless (I believe) because Bell, Shaw, Telus, Rogers refuse to run lines out there. if that provider goes down his choices are Satellite or buying one of those mobile USB sticks and nothing else!! We do need the right for competition and Choice, often though the small guys lease from the bigger guys so really what is the choice? the big guy is just cutting out the middle man and giving you worse service.

Re:What about the Country Folks

[tom229]

Yes your brother will be screwed. If the big guys can't serve him then its not adsl and is probably wireless. Of course this is basically a wireless proxy network on a dsl or cable wholesale account so if the big provider uses this legislation to such said wholesaler off then your brother is back on dialup.

Free markets? Good idea, we should try that!

[big_paul76]

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?

I read the bloody Decision by the CRTC...

[gus goose]

... here: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2008/dt2008-17.htm

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 structures as they ghave been for years (govt. regulated cost + 15%)... and competition will continue to have access to co-locate to continue servicing things...

further, the decision stipulates that the monopolies can not mandate the type of service on the local loop (i.e. Bell has n control over what types of service are operated on the 'last mile'....).

In essence, I can't see any degrading of the system by this decision.

I will NOT sign the petition, and, in fact, after reading the deciison, I am motivated to write in PRAISE of the CRTC.

gus

Re:I read the bloody Decision by the CRTC...

[McGiraf]

Read up on UBB too.

This is bad, really bad.

Re:I read the bloody Decision by the CRTC...

[McGiraf]

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-484.htm

UBB, that's bad

DAMN THAT GOVERNMENT

[Anonymous Coward]

OH BOB SAGET!

MTS is a hypocrite

[Munchkinguy]

MTS Allstream, the company leading this campaign, is a bit of a hypocrite here. They don't share their fibre optic cable network with anyone. They won't let private businesses lease their fibre optic cable network. You can see their defence of this position on the CRTC website @ http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-9.htm

Bell & Rogers

[QA]

I'll give you a quick example of how our two major players operate. I'm speaking of Bell and Rogers.
Recently our Feds decided to sell off some spectrum. Since they had a small clue of what was about to happen, they reserved 25% of it and the rest was open to bid.

What did Rogers and Bell do? Well, it was like you or I sitting at the poker table with a $100.00 bankroll, against a high roller with 2 million.

  Bell & Rogers just kept raising, like an auto bot on the bay...well, I'll bid 20...raise....OK, 25...raise.....OK 30...raise...ad-nauseum.

The goverment expected a few hundred million and were a bit surprised to rake in 8 BILLION dollars....Rogers and Bell?....meh....pocket change.

Oh, and now they are litigating over the reserved spectrum they were locked out of.

I apoligize for muddying the argument here (cell vs pipes) but it's the same idea. I do not have a citation handy but I believe Canada is ranked 4th or 5th in the developed world for price vs performance, re: internet and cell.

Pete

I'm really beginning to hate the CRTC

[mrdtr]

The CRTC has a history of making bad decisions. Almost always it's to the detriment to the people of Canada and to the benefit of a select few corporations, (Bell, Telus)

Re:"Competition"? Markets are evil, remember?

[dryeo]

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.

There's a Bigger Problem

[tom229]

I live in Alberta and have petitioned through competitivebroadband as any concerned citizen should, however, I'm afraid the problem is much larger than this. As a user stated above, the wholesale ISP industry is dead anyways. The margins are so razor thin and the big companies just bully the reseller with their purchasing power (free modems, discounted rate plans, large scale commercial advertising, etc).

I moved to Calgary recently and was surprised to find my choices for an ISP were Shaw (cable) and Telus (DSL). There's a few independent companies like Terago and Radiant but they serve business only accounts. Upon further investigation I realized that Telus blocks alot of standard incomming ports so my choice was narrowed to Shaw alone and I pay something like $45 a month for standard high speed with no option of switching (ie if Shaw raises their price to $100 a month tomorrow I guess I will be paying $100 a month).

This is absolutely ridiculous and our government has been letting tech companies get away with this for decades (roger's GSM monopoly is another good example). What we really need is reform on the fundamental principals of the data backbone. Electronic information sharing is quite obviously a fundamental aspect of our lives that needs to be governed by the tax payers, period. I'm no finance minister so I don't know the complications of federalizing communication highways but I do know that the commercial (almost military) monopolization of the Canadian data structure cannot continue without some serious future economic complications.

Why's that not redundant?

[jonaskoelker]

Corruption and lobbying.

I thought that was the same thing? ...

poor canada

[Ninjaspork19]

its aboot respect, its aboot dignity

Re:Letter of appology-And if my Lawyer doesn't sca

[Nom du Keyboard]

These days? I will not deal with that company.
It was a nightmare!

It's probably good for Bell Canada that guns are not nearly as legal in Canada as they are in the USA.