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

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.

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!

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.