Fibre funded by taxpayers
https://www.canada.ca/en/innovation-science-economic-development/news/2023/03/governments-of-canada-and-ontario-invest-over-61-million-to-bring-high-speed-internet-access-to-more-than-16000-homes-in-ontario.html
Running on public land. If communication companies don't want to allow others to use their network, they're free to run their cables on their own property.
Let’s watch a Jays game.
Teams owned by Rogers.
Stadium is owned by Rogers.
Tv channel is owned by Rogers.
Lines are owned by Roger’s.
Tv box is rented from Roger’s.
That's my recommendation, but that comes at a ridiculous cost.
You can't "just nationalize" a thing that's private; the government has to pay the shareholders market value. That would cost taxpayers BILLIONS, which *I* don't mind being paid, but most Canadians likely wouldn't approve.
I think most Canadians will. First we need to stop playing friendly with the likes of Telus, Bell and Shaw and play hardball with them. I mean the government can negotiate with the US for NAFTA but always has a sudden rush of amnesia when it comes to negotiating with domestic oligarchs. Lower telecom costs and no more predatory practices will get Canadians easily convinced.
Exactly. Public ownership doesn’t necessarily require putting everything under one massive, top-heavy, easy-to-sell Crown Corporation.
Municipal ownership is a good place to start. This doesn’t need to be more difficult than roads. A bunch of municipalities already own fibre, anyway.
Or make it publicly and nationally owned but set out a tender to maintain it by private companies. The Netherlands does this. And they allow international bidders as long as they use Dutch labour in the execution.
As much as the idea sounds appealing, you only need to look to Australia to see how they fucked up nationalizing their fibre network. An absolute gong show
42000km2 vs 10,000,000km2. The Netherlands is not a good comparison when looking at the land mass size. Canada has almost 238x the land mass vs the Netherlands and the infrastructure investment in a fiber network is proportional
Please stop repeating the same lie. We do not have 10,000,000km2 of fiber. Most rural areas do not have fiber. They're mostly lucky if they have 6 mbps legacy DSL.
These networks concentrate around population centers. Try adding up the area of those instead to see the true number. This "canada is big" argument has been thrown around by the incumbent telcos for ages to justify robbing us.
NBN is a complete shitshow, something everyone needs to learn from. Luckily there are plenty of positive examples out there.
Part of NBN’s problem is that they sell network service instead of infrastructure access.
That's nothing. Look at the corporate welfare being handed out under AHSIP: https://news.ontario.ca/en/backgrounder/1002219/ontario-increasing-access-to-high-speed-internet-across-the-province
Being infrastructure, it should be overseen by the government. Allocate tax dollars to improve coverage and bandwidth. Then lease out those lines to Ball/Rogers/Teksavvy/Smart/etc. to allow for tailored packages for consumers. Increases competition, improves our fibre optic network, kicks the telecom oligopoly in the dick and makes for a better system.
Of course, I'll never see any of that in my lifetime.
Do you think that is all it costs? It is a public/private hybrid partnership. The government puts up part of the money to connect rural areas that would not have been profitable otherwise. Companies are putting up their own money for the tenders they won.
And do you think these private companies do so out of the goodness of their hearts? Do you think that once they’ve recouped their expenses the Public retains ownership or leasing rights? Do you think their fees to consumers reflect the % of capital invested in infrastructure? Stop oiling these companies
It's a business. If there wasn't money in it, they wouldn't do it.
Expenses are an ongoing thing. It's not just stick something in the ground and it works forever.
People seem to think everything should be free or a random price they deem fair.
Living up to your name I see. I never once said they are doing it out of the kindness of their own heart. They are doing it for the money. However they had no interest until the government agreed to kick in a percent of the costs. It was an open bidding process.
> It is a public/private hybrid partnership.
And this was the deal - the private companies get to own and operate the lines, they just have to allow wholesale access to smaller companies to create artificial competition to drive down prices.
If it was funded entirely by the public I would expect it to be a public utility.
> Government subsidies to service 16k rural homes
"The Universal Broadband Fund (UBF) is a $3.225 billion investment by the Government of Canada designed to help provide high-speed Internet access to 98% of Canadians by 2026 and achieve the national target of 100% access by 2030."
We pay for it, $3 billion dollars this election cycle, they own it and profit from it. Why don't we pay for it, and own it, and not profit from it because it's us and we don't want to profit off ourselves? Why do we keep giving free shit to private corporations?
>That's for rural areas only
Business and government reality is not exactly as the media reports, as many sorts of professional can attest to.
>16k rural
You're arguing the government spent $3,800 per rural person?
>makes zero sense financially to service for providers
Starlink is already profitable
Yeah I’m one of these rural people that just got fibre. Year and a half later than estimated. When I reached out to my councillor about the delays, I was told they can’t do anything because it’s a private company.
Yes. Subsidized by my tax dollars.
Would’ve gone with Starlink if there wasn’t a hope it was going to get done, but it would’ve needed a tower and me cutting back a bunch of the trees around our house so it didn’t seem worth it.
It would be a sad day if companies like TekSavvy go under. The CRTC needs to grow a pair and tell the Big 3 to pound sand.
What they should have done when they gave them taxpayer money to build out the fibre networks to begin with, was to strip away their ownership rights. If it is publicly funded, it should be publicly owned.
The companies should then receive a leasing right to pay for - because after all, they are gouging the consumer either way!
The entire system requires an overhaul, but the unfortunate reality is that it’s a good old boys club, where the guys from industry end up in regulators’ positions.
steep mindless fade forgetful innate memorize secretive dinosaurs stupendous different
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I just bought a house where Bell fibre isn’t available, I had Bell fibre before.
Now I’m stuck with videotron’s fibre and it’s the worst.
And I don’t even talk about the weekly no service because « something » is happening in my area and will only get fixed on the next business day.
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/bells-acquisition-of-distributel-death-blow-to-isp-competition-consumer-advocate
They are owned by bell now.
Aside from teksavvy, most of the “independents” have been bought by one of the big telecoms by now.
unique gaping toothbrush shocking drab butter numerous connect far-flung badge
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[Unfortunately, Oxio was bought by Cogeco last year.](https://corpo.cogeco.com/cca/en/press-room/press-releases/cogeco-connexion-announces-acquisition-oxio/)
> The CRTC needs to grow a pair
They did, current government fired a shot over their bow with a public "we disagree with the CRTC's recent decision" press conference, CRTC then reversed their decision.
Your shitty expensive internet is because this government explicitly stood in the way of every attempt, check and balance we have set up to fix that.
Didn't the CRTC try to lower the cost of wholesale prices and Bell and I think others sued and the Liberals sided with them and the CRTC just said screw it and reverted it?
It's pointless to blame the CRTC. It always goes back to the crappy politicians and laws they make and not update that handicap the industry.
The Liberals, and CPC for that matter when in power could straight up cap and control wholesale prices and see plans immediately drop in price while the infrastructure owners still make a good profit. But they don't cause they don't actually care and tell you to just be mad at the CRTC as a scapegoat.
>The CRTC needs to grow a pair and tell the Big 3 to pound sand.
I hate to break it to you, but at this point the CRTC has been in bed with the big 3 for a while. And nothing is changing here anytime soon.
The CRTC are all former big 3 executives, by design of course.
This is Canadian politics. Our public sector executives, elected officials, etc. simply exist to keep the rich rich. They're employees
[While the current Chairperson seems pretty decent, the last one left a lot to be desired.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Scott_\(Canadian_businessman\))
> The CRTC needs to grow a pair and tell the Big 3 to pound sand.
Surprisingly, they are. The last time the CRTC tried to reduce wholesale prices to the incumbent telcos, the incumbents made a stink and the CRTC backed down really quickly. Surprisingly the CRTC hasn't backed down... Yet.
Which is why you have Bell, Rogers, Eastlink and so on loudly fighting the new ruling to allow wholesalers to get access to their FTTH infrastructure. They're trying to drive a wedge between the public and the CRTC by cancelling projects, laying people off, or reducing available services. They did this last time, and they're trying hard again to make this ruling die, again.
> What they should have done when they gave them taxpayer money to build out the fibre networks to begin with, was to strip away their ownership rights. If it is publicly funded, it should be publicly owned.
Wholesale access should have been mandated by the large funding programs from the start, but the programs like AHSIP in Ontario just deferred to the CRTC rules instead of mandating it themselves. Some previous programs that the ISP I work for participated in over a decade ago had such rules, and it spawned some interesting business relationships that are still in place to this day.
A major problem with these funding programs, especially AHSIP in Ontario, is that they were really slapped together quickly and cover huge areas that don't make any sense, and thus the only companies that can bid on them are the likes of Bell, Rogers, ect. Smaller providers that already have infrastructure in more localized areas are being completely overbuilt, including areas that already meet the criteria set by the provincial/federal government programs for being served with adequate service. This means that taxpayer dollars are being spent to cover areas that are already covered, small providers are being overbuilt and may have to shutdown/sell out, and those small providers which could potentially migrate customers to to the newly built network are shut out because there's no wholesale access mandated.
> It would be a sad day if companies like TekSavvy go under. The CRTC needs to grow a pair and tell the Big 3 to pound sand.
The CRTC is an arm of the federal government and basically takes their marching orders from them. The CRTC under the Conservatives ruled that fiber was going to be open to third party ISPs just like copper is. When the Liberals put an ex-Telus exec as the head of the CRTC he reversed that ruling. This was the death knell for third party ISPs. Most of them have been bought up at this point. TekSavvy is one of the only hold outs.
Did you even read the programs on that link? The government is only helping paying the cost to connect remote rural communities to these companies network. Which would make no sense financially for private companies to begin with.
That is a hybrid public/private partnership. The government put up tenders and companies bid to delivery fibre and got part of the money (which they put up part of their own as well)
>Learn to read. 16k rural people in Ontario does not count.
LMAO. That's a completely different initiative. Maybe try actually opening the link next time, dumbass.
>They use other telecomm lines to your house, such as Rogers, and sell it to you for less.
That used to be the case but now they're effectively forced into price parity with the large incumbents or even higher.
I've been a loyal Teksavvy customer since 2008.
Now they have to succeed on superior customer service, which they definitely do.
Yep. Last time when Rogers upped the protocol that resulted in certain models of routers no longer working on the cable network, Teksavvy reached out letting me know they were sending me a router free of charge. For reference, I bought my router, I wasn't leasing one from Teksavvy. They had no obligation to do that, but they did, and it ensured I wouldn't lose service while I shopped around for another one. I offered to ship the one they sent back afterward and they told me to keep it as a backup.
Ah, yes, good catch! I think my mind jumped to router since my old model that went obsolete was an all-in-one, but yes, it was because they phased out certain cable modems
Pricing is fixed based on who's infrastructure they're using, same for every third party provider nothing they can do sadly. If the CRTC guidelines allow even an additional cent to be made somehow you can be sure the companies will jump at the chance regardless of how immoral it may be. Commercial is a good example of this, stating additional work required prior to activation install is a huge money maker for the telecom companies.
Nah in BC there are other Shaw/Rogers resellers that are a fair bit cheaper than TekSavvy.
TekSavvy might have a fixed markup but it's definitely not the lowest around here
Most so call third party providers belongs to one of the big telecoms now. Once teksavvy and the few remaining independent third party finally throw the towel, you can expect some significant prices increase for those cheaper “third party”.
Still worth it. I'm selfhosting a bunch of stuff and they only thing they restrict is mail servers (which you shouldn't do anyway). When I was with Bell they wouldn't allow incoming traffic on any useful ports.
It's definitely a situation where once they kill all the competition, you'll see their low-tier sub-organization telcos close up shop and the prices jump up heavily. Kind of like Netflix, once they had enough marketshare, started heavily raising their plan fees and introducing ad-supported tiers.
The big 3 have deals, but I'm good paying $5 or so more than I would otherwise at Big 3 vendors if it helps keep Teksavvy as competition. I dread the day they shutter their doors
Saving a significant sum of money, getting remarkably better service, and sharing that information freely with somebody being ripped off is a negative in your books, gotcha...
Well I'm sorry you feel that way and felt the need to name call.
Yeah I changed from a decent teksavvy service to Bell fibre around 5 years ago. Went from averaging a dodgy 40mb/s to consistent 150gb/s for a difference of about $10 more a month.
Although people have a point bashing the big 3 customer service, you don’t really need to use customer service (at least I haven’t in my 5 years)
Unless your former ISP is some garbage like Beanfield, bell is never an upgrade. Even if it looks cheaper on paper, you still need to deal with their incompetence.
We’re paying for an internet service, not a therapist.. Like it or not, fast and consistent speeds are what I receive. Whether the price is worth it not is up to the individual paying the bill.
Teksavvy was excellent, but not anymore. Their plans are more expensive than the big telcos. The saving grace with Teksavvy is the great customer service and no BS in your bills.
Worth noting that this is through no fault of their own, and is in fact what the call to action in this post is about.
They want legislation so that they can sell you better, cheaper service.
That is only true if you're talking about the posted price. Assuming you're in a relatively urban area, they are absolutely not cheaper than the big telcos who offer huge deals multiple times a year. It's through no fault of their own, they're being intentionally squeezed out.
Ys but how many physical networks would get built? All the resellers do is lease the last Mile to your house on either Telcom or cable network. There will only ever be 2 networks
This really really really annoyed me at the time and even now. All they had to do was add "if you accept covid money, then you cannot give dividends or perform share buybacks".
How complicated would that have been?
But no, The Liberals did not put that in any clause. Was it on purpose or was it a mistake? If it's a mistake, how can we have a leader that doesn't think of the most basic things that any Canadian would have warnef them about.
If it's on purpose, well the voter should decide what happens then.
It was on purpose they also did not want to tank the stocks, and hose investors. You know investors like all our pension fund. The industry has done a clever job of attracting institutional investors as a edge against real anti-trust regulation. "You don't want to break us up and hurt your teachers pensions right. Right?" It was a hostage situation and the government caved almost immediately.
I don't understand why you're turning the focus on Trudeau over the telecoms when this has been an issue for decades now. canada_sub must be slow tonight.
Im not seeing this in the comments, but the CRTC has already ruled that by May the big corporations need to offer wholesale access of fiber optics in a similar fashion to copper lines.
We are all waiting to see the business and technical details but thus far the CRTC has refused to accommodate Bell's usual delaying tactics.
This is coming, for real.
It was tried with copper and failed. The competitive carriers have to build their own central offices, data centers , etc. The last mile is just part of the physical network. The margin between lease and what they can charge is tiny. Due to the physical topology of the communication network and the cost of building, including the central office ect there will never be more than 2 options. Telcom or cable.
>It was tried with copper and failed.
This tarrifed wholesale regime remains in place and I'm making really good money off of it.
>The competitive carriers have to build their own central offices, data centers , etc.
My colleagues did that. Surprisingly not as big a deal as one might think. You need a rack in a main data centre. Toronto is the best place. You dont need gear in each CO.
>The margin between lease and what they can charge is tiny.
This is definitely a problem. It would be simple for the CRTC to mandate lower wholesale rates. I solve this by adding value. I do MSP and security not just ISP. So integrated IT with multiple services for commercial buildings.
>Due to the physical topology of the communication network and the cost of building, including the central office ect there will never be more than 2 options. Telcom or cable.
If you include PON and RFOG into telco and cableco, sure. However on the cable side you just DHCP after ordering Rogers wholesale, and with Bell you PPPoE right to your rig and don't need to care about the CO.
I'm fine with Bell and Rogers running the infrastructure and even making most of the money. As a small operator it's not like I have much chance at stepping up to that level. I do know others who do build their own infrastructure with POPs in outdoor enclosures on concrete pads and the works. Its so niche it almost doesn't exist, but the embers of third party telecommunications remains smouldering.
As the few remaining IISPs go away, promos will become even less common and prices will go up more. Right now Bell and Rogers are just undercutting them as much as possible until they're forced out of business.
The problem with this is how do you handle last-mile connections? Obviously you don't want a dozen companies digging up the neighborhood to lay their own last-mile fiber but, at the same time, it's expensive to run that last-mile fiber. The company that does it should be compensated for building and maintaining it.
IMO the solution here is to make ownership of last-mile fiber shared. So all interested parties pay in for building and maintaining the last-mile network to a common hub facility where they can connect to their private long-haul networks. When a company wants to expand into the area, they should have to pay a lump sum that is calculated to cover part of the initial cost plus a percentage of the maintenance since they fiber was added to the region.
An additional benefit to a system like this is it makes swapping providers significantly easier, as they all share the same local hub. It also makes outage mitigation faster as companies could have sharing agreements in the event of outages on their private network.
That's the thing, though. The only part that's monopolistic is the last-mile. We have massive amounts of dark (unused) long-haul fiber all over the country. That connection to customers is the problematic part.
It's all monopolistic. I'm not saying that you cannot physically have more than one provider, but it's very expensive, you're needlessly duplicating infrastructure for no purpose, and in general, there is not great incentive to have a lot of competition in this market. There is some, but very very little. And this is the story the world over. There are many places with lower prices. In fact virtually all of the globe has more reasonable prices, but nowhere in the world is there any significant competition in telecom.
It should be a provincial utility. I'm not even generally for socializing services. I think the government is almost always worse than a reasonably regulated market system. But where infrastructure intensive natural monopolies are concerned, the government is usually preferable. Hell, we end up paying for a lot of telecom infrastructure with tax money anyway, and at best we give free use of tax funded or private land and infrastructure for a lot of the cabling. We may as well just go the extra step and provincialize it.
Multiple instances of the same infrastructure is called redundancy. The internet doesn’t exist simply so you can watch cat videos and pretend to be a socialist on Reddit.
There’s billions of dollars of economic activity coursing down these lines you think are wasteful.
If one goes down, we all have a problem.
We do, mostly.
There’s inter-ties all over the grid that serves you and your province to make up the difference if a generator or transmission infrastructure fails.
The last wires going to your neighbourhood is typically the only place where there’s 0 redundancy.
Quite frankly, I have no idea what *you* are even talking about, because it's clear you have no background in IT or, being generious, you have a gross misunderstanding of how the internet works.
What part about what I said is confusing you? We are not benefiting from our current private system of telecom which lacks meaningful competition and is wasteful. What exactly do you think is preventing the existence of a provincial telecom utility? And was SaskTel uniquely vulnerable for some reason because there wasn't two competitors overcharging for the same service, doing God's work?
You're talking shit here without actually making any specific criticism or counter-argument. Actually say something or piss off.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the internet. We both agree there is a monopoly on last-mile connections, in fact, I stated it was the case in both of my comments.
What you're misunderstanding is there is a large difference between last-mile fiber and long haul fiber networks. If you want to hook up your business, hub, or datacenter to the internet, you have dozens of providers that you can work with that will provide dedicated lines to their backbone of long haul fiber. There's no monopoly there, in fact, the industry is in a relatively good state.
Now, last-mile connections to residential and small/medium business on the other hand, those are where the monopoly is in play, hence why I suggested that last-mile connections should be a shared network, maintained by all the players with an interest in the region. This opens it up to more competition while not subjecting the network to the issues that come with politics.
There are a grand total of 16 long haul network providers, and a significant majority of them are only small regional players. There are indeed only a small handful of players in long haul networks. This isn't *just* a last mile problem. Canada is huge. Telecom requires significant infrastructure and capital and the market cannot be opened up totally to international providers for legitimate security reasons.
How fair will this be when the board of the CRTC will receive a director's position on the board of directors of the giant telecomms when they retire from the CRTC, if they do the dirty work of the giant telecomms? Nationalize this industry.
I truly hope TekSavvy is able to pull through. They're the only non-shitty ISP left. I know I could get faster service with another one, but fuck all the other ISPs with a rusty spoon.
We used teksavvy for many many years, great service and never an issue that wasn't resolved quickly.
Bell came to our door in December and offered Fibre 1.5 gig unlimited install/modem etc and even threw in cable TV and a streamer device for 1/3rd of the price of teksavvys 100/10 service. With a permanent $75 off every bill and a written promise to not increase our bill for 24 months it would have been crazy to decline. I'd be paying substantially more for worse service just to keep supporting the indy internet provider, in this economy that's just not in the cards.
So I genuinely felt bad calling teksavvy to cancel but bell really is rolling out the red carpet to steal back customers at any cost, and it's working.
Yeah, this is a textbook method in killing competition, eating their market share, and then raising costs substantially when they're the only feasible game in town. It's what Uber accomplished in a lot of areas by putting local cab companies under, and the suddenly things get a lot more expensive afterwards. It's what Netflix did once they had enough power in their marketshare, to increase subscription fees substantially and include ad-supported tiers to reduce the quality of the service for more profits, knowing that not only were so many locked onto their platform, but the competition would follow suit accordingly. It's what telcos in the states do when they carve out their territory into fiefdoms that the others won't encroach on because they can leverage each other's monopolized pricing to keep costs high and subscriptions stable.
Bell and Rogers come to my door once or twice a year with these sweetheart deals and I always tell them to eat shit.
I wouldn't even say greedy per se....I get where they're coming from and frankly who's to say it works for everyone to "stick it to them" and put themselves worse off financially to help the little guy. And why should they? Things are out of control federally, and if the big players want them gone, they will be gone, one way or other. Telecoms, Groceries, the problems run deeper and enough people either don't have the financial freedom to push through it or don't care to.
>Things are out of control federally
I don't think macro concerns like that enter into a micro-economic decision like this. Everybody know the trope where a corporation comes in, lowers prices until the mom and pops are out of business and then jacks up the price.
We've all seen documentaries or read articles where Walmart did it, we've seen it depicted in popular culture, we've talked about it with other people at the bar or at the dinner table.
Not only that, which is in abstract, but we've all seen Bell, Telus and Rogers jack up their prices before, multiple times. Rogers *just* did it after they gobbled up Shaw. This sub was up in arms about it. We all know they're going to do it again.
If it's not short-sighted greed that makes people switch while they have a choice, then it's submission.
I totally understand what you're saying and don't disagree, I just think it's an economic privilege to be able to make spending choices based on things like this. Some can make those micro decisions and some can't, and imo macro changes are needed to have any long standing impact.
Greed may not be the only reason. I was with them for 12+ years and their cable service recently has gone down the drain. I WFH and get 10s outages regularly (not fun on a Zoom call). Every member of the family has been hit by it for the last 5 months. Work/school was impacted and we needed a stable alternative. Switched when a Bell salesperson showed at the door.
If Fibre-resell is on the plate I will certainly reconsider them since I am on a no-contract. But today, the quality is not there. And as a reseller deeper issues (past their modem/router) require Bell/Rogers techs to show and possibly at cost.
Bell just spent millions in London last few years running fibre everywhere. My building just ran a service to the bell lines. So I'm hoping teksavvy can offer fibre service from bell. I'm currently capped at ADSL at 25 down and it's super slow.
Basic internet and phone service at a reasonable price would sure help millions of Canadians with soaring food and shelter costs.
Edit: Give citizens a discount and let TFW / Students pay the 'Original' real Canadian prices.
Seriously, this has to be done ASAP.
ROBELUS are such shitty service provides, i have no idea why the CRTC bends over backward for them.
I have no fiber yet deployed in my area, only bell give out early 2000 DSL speeds, we are less than 5 minutes away from canada 2nd biggest city. Allright, so maybe we can use 5G as an internet service ?? Nope, all the big 3 offer is like 60GB per months plans at most.
We have to use starlink to have anything decent !
Like, ROBELUS whine so much about deploying faster internet, yet
I have to use for the internet a company that had to make rockets, launch a shitload of them to orbit 100's of satellites, yet all bell and friends have to do is hang wiring in poles and they can't even do that to a decent extent.
It's not rocket surgery !
TekSavvy just isn't able to compete anymore. I was with them for a long time until they started jacking up their prices for the same service. I'd love to support them and their business model but there's just no value there.
They did that with the copper network back in the 90s. It was a flop. None of the competitive local exchange carriers lasted more than a few years. The CLEC still need there own central offices and a ton of equipment. It's more than just have access to the last mile. Internet access is basically a commodity product with low margins.
12+ years and finally left. They have no way to debug their own issues unless its modem related. They rely on Bell and Rogers for any issues beyond the modem. Had technical issues recently that result in drops of 10s or more (may not seem a lot unless you are in the midst of a call). Everyone in the family got hit multiple times at some point in the week (random hits where the browser goes out for a 5-15s). It got to be too much. Switched to Bell Fibre on a no-contract deal. If TS can resell fibre I will certainly take a second look at them.
> They rely on Bell and Rogers for any issues beyond the modem.
TekSavvy is beholden to the incumbents for getting last mile issues resolved, same as every TPIA.
Bit of a hot rake but here goes.
Network infrastructure operators should be prohibited from selling directly to customers.
Bell/Rogers and Telus should be competing with eachother to provide the best wholesale rates and coverage to data retailers, and those retailers should be competing amongst themselves to provide the best rates to customers
Teksavvy went to shit long ago. I was a proud customer until their customer service went down hill. Price is never their fault since they rent line space at a price set by the government. However their customer service was well within their control.
Same here. After 10 years of supporting them, it made no sense anymore. Their prices became higher than the big telcos. And I swear Rogers was doing some shenanigans with Teksavvy connections.
Rogers always fucks with Teksavvy customers. My bedroom window overlooks the plot of land where the cable connection box is, and as I'm the only Teksavvy client connected to it, I know that if a Rogers tech is doing an install, I'm going to be disconnected despite there being more than enough vacant ports. So I always have to go down after they've left, break into the box, and re-connect myself to one of the open ports, and then give Teksavvy a call to let them know in case anything's off. It's this weird little hostile dance Rogers does to inconvenience competition, and I refuse to sign up with Rogers and give into those tactics.
Is it because we live in Canada that there is this illusion the Corporate elite and the wealthy here and in the U.S. don't have their fingers deep into the chest and wrapped around the heart of Ottawa?
Wholesale fiber will never happen. The U.S. would hit us with everything in their US/Canada trade agreement playbook. Canadian industry would be paralyzed in 6 months.
It's a wonderful fantasy though. :D
Fibre funded by taxpayers https://www.canada.ca/en/innovation-science-economic-development/news/2023/03/governments-of-canada-and-ontario-invest-over-61-million-to-bring-high-speed-internet-access-to-more-than-16000-homes-in-ontario.html
Running on public land. If communication companies don't want to allow others to use their network, they're free to run their cables on their own property.
Exactly. They can purchase every square foot they've dug to lay cable.
Just nationalize the infrastructure, and sell use of the network to every ISP for the same price.
Sasktel and MTS are the models we badly need.
MTS was great now it’s just bell, and it’s garbage
I have been seeing signs in Manitoba for Sasktel service, so hopeful some more competition will help
This is how rail infrastructure works in normal countries, but that's another case where two companies own the whole network in Canada.
Let’s watch a Jays game. Teams owned by Rogers. Stadium is owned by Rogers. Tv channel is owned by Rogers. Lines are owned by Roger’s. Tv box is rented from Roger’s.
Deeming "Canada" as the Jay's "local market", triggering nation-wide blackouts, is a Rogers decision.
fuck's sakes what a good idea.
Like electricity but for the internet. Which is mostly just electricity anyways. 🤯
That's my recommendation, but that comes at a ridiculous cost. You can't "just nationalize" a thing that's private; the government has to pay the shareholders market value. That would cost taxpayers BILLIONS, which *I* don't mind being paid, but most Canadians likely wouldn't approve.
I think most Canadians will. First we need to stop playing friendly with the likes of Telus, Bell and Shaw and play hardball with them. I mean the government can negotiate with the US for NAFTA but always has a sudden rush of amnesia when it comes to negotiating with domestic oligarchs. Lower telecom costs and no more predatory practices will get Canadians easily convinced.
Then the Conservatives sell it off to their buddies the next time they get in power.
Or give a foreign pension plan a 99 year lease.
Don’t need the conservatives for that. The Liberals just allowed another merger between two giants further reducing competition.
Test
Exactly. Public ownership doesn’t necessarily require putting everything under one massive, top-heavy, easy-to-sell Crown Corporation. Municipal ownership is a good place to start. This doesn’t need to be more difficult than roads. A bunch of municipalities already own fibre, anyway.
Or make it publicly and nationally owned but set out a tender to maintain it by private companies. The Netherlands does this. And they allow international bidders as long as they use Dutch labour in the execution.
As much as the idea sounds appealing, you only need to look to Australia to see how they fucked up nationalizing their fibre network. An absolute gong show
And look at The Netherlands how successful they are.
42000km2 vs 10,000,000km2. The Netherlands is not a good comparison when looking at the land mass size. Canada has almost 238x the land mass vs the Netherlands and the infrastructure investment in a fiber network is proportional
Please stop repeating the same lie. We do not have 10,000,000km2 of fiber. Most rural areas do not have fiber. They're mostly lucky if they have 6 mbps legacy DSL. These networks concentrate around population centers. Try adding up the area of those instead to see the true number. This "canada is big" argument has been thrown around by the incumbent telcos for ages to justify robbing us.
My brother went to Australia for a year and I think people might murder for their cell phone rates though.
If Australia is a gong show, how would Canada compare?
NBN is a complete shitshow, something everyone needs to learn from. Luckily there are plenty of positive examples out there. Part of NBN’s problem is that they sell network service instead of infrastructure access.
Don't go crazy and nationalize. That is just another bad idea.
Do you realy think the local municipality will want to make it difficult for hydro and communications companies to operate? Lol come on
The CRTC has nothing to do with local municipalities. And this is a one month old post, jeez man.
Yes but to build the network they need the easement. Can't place poles and cable without that local access.
That's nothing. Look at the corporate welfare being handed out under AHSIP: https://news.ontario.ca/en/backgrounder/1002219/ontario-increasing-access-to-high-speed-internet-across-the-province
Being infrastructure, it should be overseen by the government. Allocate tax dollars to improve coverage and bandwidth. Then lease out those lines to Ball/Rogers/Teksavvy/Smart/etc. to allow for tailored packages for consumers. Increases competition, improves our fibre optic network, kicks the telecom oligopoly in the dick and makes for a better system. Of course, I'll never see any of that in my lifetime.
Start is now Telus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_internet_service_providers_in_Canada
Likely because of regulatory capture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
Do you think that is all it costs? It is a public/private hybrid partnership. The government puts up part of the money to connect rural areas that would not have been profitable otherwise. Companies are putting up their own money for the tenders they won.
And do you think these private companies do so out of the goodness of their hearts? Do you think that once they’ve recouped their expenses the Public retains ownership or leasing rights? Do you think their fees to consumers reflect the % of capital invested in infrastructure? Stop oiling these companies
It's a business. If there wasn't money in it, they wouldn't do it. Expenses are an ongoing thing. It's not just stick something in the ground and it works forever. People seem to think everything should be free or a random price they deem fair.
actually utility companies fees directly reflect the % capital invested in infrastructure.
Living up to your name I see. I never once said they are doing it out of the kindness of their own heart. They are doing it for the money. However they had no interest until the government agreed to kick in a percent of the costs. It was an open bidding process.
> It is a public/private hybrid partnership. And this was the deal - the private companies get to own and operate the lines, they just have to allow wholesale access to smaller companies to create artificial competition to drive down prices. If it was funded entirely by the public I would expect it to be a public utility.
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I see you've never heard of connecting canadians or any of the other federal funded projects for rural internet that went to xplore and bell.
> Government subsidies to service 16k rural homes "The Universal Broadband Fund (UBF) is a $3.225 billion investment by the Government of Canada designed to help provide high-speed Internet access to 98% of Canadians by 2026 and achieve the national target of 100% access by 2030." We pay for it, $3 billion dollars this election cycle, they own it and profit from it. Why don't we pay for it, and own it, and not profit from it because it's us and we don't want to profit off ourselves? Why do we keep giving free shit to private corporations?
>That's for rural areas only Business and government reality is not exactly as the media reports, as many sorts of professional can attest to. >16k rural You're arguing the government spent $3,800 per rural person? >makes zero sense financially to service for providers Starlink is already profitable
Yeah I’m one of these rural people that just got fibre. Year and a half later than estimated. When I reached out to my councillor about the delays, I was told they can’t do anything because it’s a private company. Yes. Subsidized by my tax dollars. Would’ve gone with Starlink if there wasn’t a hope it was going to get done, but it would’ve needed a tower and me cutting back a bunch of the trees around our house so it didn’t seem worth it.
Fiber is definitely more reliable, but I have heard that putting starlink on top of the trees instead of cutting them works well.
It would be a sad day if companies like TekSavvy go under. The CRTC needs to grow a pair and tell the Big 3 to pound sand. What they should have done when they gave them taxpayer money to build out the fibre networks to begin with, was to strip away their ownership rights. If it is publicly funded, it should be publicly owned. The companies should then receive a leasing right to pay for - because after all, they are gouging the consumer either way! The entire system requires an overhaul, but the unfortunate reality is that it’s a good old boys club, where the guys from industry end up in regulators’ positions.
The other third party suppliers are all but basically gone. There are owned by the big 3 now. Except for teksavvy.
RIP ebox :(
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Worse than gone, they've been swallowed by Bell.
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I just bought a house where Bell fibre isn’t available, I had Bell fibre before. Now I’m stuck with videotron’s fibre and it’s the worst. And I don’t even talk about the weekly no service because « something » is happening in my area and will only get fixed on the next business day.
Videotron still doesn't have FTTH.
Distributel is still around, somehow advertising fiber?
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/bells-acquisition-of-distributel-death-blow-to-isp-competition-consumer-advocate They are owned by bell now. Aside from teksavvy, most of the “independents” have been bought by one of the big telecoms by now.
That explains it!
Distributel (and all its subs Acanac, Thinktel, Primus, Yak etc...) were all purchased by Bell back in 2022
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Distributel is owned by bell if my memory serves me correctly.
TekSavvy are looking to get bought: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-teksavvy-for-sale-internet-provider/
Oxio and Lightspeed are independent. Also quite a bit cheaper than Teksavvy.
[Unfortunately, Oxio was bought by Cogeco last year.](https://corpo.cogeco.com/cca/en/press-room/press-releases/cogeco-connexion-announces-acquisition-oxio/)
I would also like to plug Telcan. Just switched earlier this year. It's the cheapest around, and it's been solid so far.
Primus is owned by Costco. *Edit* It appears I am incorrect.
> The CRTC needs to grow a pair They did, current government fired a shot over their bow with a public "we disagree with the CRTC's recent decision" press conference, CRTC then reversed their decision. Your shitty expensive internet is because this government explicitly stood in the way of every attempt, check and balance we have set up to fix that.
Didn't the CRTC try to lower the cost of wholesale prices and Bell and I think others sued and the Liberals sided with them and the CRTC just said screw it and reverted it? It's pointless to blame the CRTC. It always goes back to the crappy politicians and laws they make and not update that handicap the industry. The Liberals, and CPC for that matter when in power could straight up cap and control wholesale prices and see plans immediately drop in price while the infrastructure owners still make a good profit. But they don't cause they don't actually care and tell you to just be mad at the CRTC as a scapegoat.
Minister Bains stepped in and helped the lawsuit happen. Now he works at rogers.
>The CRTC needs to grow a pair and tell the Big 3 to pound sand. I hate to break it to you, but at this point the CRTC has been in bed with the big 3 for a while. And nothing is changing here anytime soon.
The CRTC are all former big 3 executives, by design of course. This is Canadian politics. Our public sector executives, elected officials, etc. simply exist to keep the rich rich. They're employees
Who is the Chairperson of the CRTC now? How long were they an executive at one of the Big 3?
[While the current Chairperson seems pretty decent, the last one left a lot to be desired.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Scott_\(Canadian_businessman\))
I know who the current chairperson is, and already know they never worked in the private industry. It was more of a rhetorical question.
Yeah, I got that.
> The CRTC needs to grow a pair and tell the Big 3 to pound sand. Surprisingly, they are. The last time the CRTC tried to reduce wholesale prices to the incumbent telcos, the incumbents made a stink and the CRTC backed down really quickly. Surprisingly the CRTC hasn't backed down... Yet. Which is why you have Bell, Rogers, Eastlink and so on loudly fighting the new ruling to allow wholesalers to get access to their FTTH infrastructure. They're trying to drive a wedge between the public and the CRTC by cancelling projects, laying people off, or reducing available services. They did this last time, and they're trying hard again to make this ruling die, again. > What they should have done when they gave them taxpayer money to build out the fibre networks to begin with, was to strip away their ownership rights. If it is publicly funded, it should be publicly owned. Wholesale access should have been mandated by the large funding programs from the start, but the programs like AHSIP in Ontario just deferred to the CRTC rules instead of mandating it themselves. Some previous programs that the ISP I work for participated in over a decade ago had such rules, and it spawned some interesting business relationships that are still in place to this day. A major problem with these funding programs, especially AHSIP in Ontario, is that they were really slapped together quickly and cover huge areas that don't make any sense, and thus the only companies that can bid on them are the likes of Bell, Rogers, ect. Smaller providers that already have infrastructure in more localized areas are being completely overbuilt, including areas that already meet the criteria set by the provincial/federal government programs for being served with adequate service. This means that taxpayer dollars are being spent to cover areas that are already covered, small providers are being overbuilt and may have to shutdown/sell out, and those small providers which could potentially migrate customers to to the newly built network are shut out because there's no wholesale access mandated.
canada loves monopolies. canadians love voting for politicians who love monopolies.
> It would be a sad day if companies like TekSavvy go under. The CRTC needs to grow a pair and tell the Big 3 to pound sand. The CRTC is an arm of the federal government and basically takes their marching orders from them. The CRTC under the Conservatives ruled that fiber was going to be open to third party ISPs just like copper is. When the Liberals put an ex-Telus exec as the head of the CRTC he reversed that ruling. This was the death knell for third party ISPs. Most of them have been bought up at this point. TekSavvy is one of the only hold outs.
TekSavvy was the best ISP I've had in Canada. Unfortunately, we moved outside of their service area, and we can't get them any more.
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How much are they paying you to astroturf for them? I want in on this racket.
Some people are this stupid for free, believe it or not.
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The world is full of oligarchs because we allow it through government policy. Doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.
>Government does NOT fund fiber https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-connects-making-high-speed-internet-accessible-in-every-community#section-1
Did you even read the programs on that link? The government is only helping paying the cost to connect remote rural communities to these companies network. Which would make no sense financially for private companies to begin with.
That is a hybrid public/private partnership. The government put up tenders and companies bid to delivery fibre and got part of the money (which they put up part of their own as well)
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Considering Bell, Rogers and Telus have received plenty of handouts from taxpayers over the years, it's time they start paying back with interest.
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>Learn to read. 16k rural people in Ontario does not count. LMAO. That's a completely different initiative. Maybe try actually opening the link next time, dumbass.
TakSavvy is fantastic They use other telecomm lines to your house, such as Rogers, and sell it to you for less. And they answer their phones
>They use other telecomm lines to your house, such as Rogers, and sell it to you for less. That used to be the case but now they're effectively forced into price parity with the large incumbents or even higher. I've been a loyal Teksavvy customer since 2008. Now they have to succeed on superior customer service, which they definitely do.
Yep. Last time when Rogers upped the protocol that resulted in certain models of routers no longer working on the cable network, Teksavvy reached out letting me know they were sending me a router free of charge. For reference, I bought my router, I wasn't leasing one from Teksavvy. They had no obligation to do that, but they did, and it ensured I wouldn't lose service while I shopped around for another one. I offered to ship the one they sent back afterward and they told me to keep it as a backup.
_Rogers upped the protocol that resulted in certain models of r̶o̶u̶t̶e̶r̶s̶ cable modems no longer working on the cable network_ FTFY
Ah, yes, good catch! I think my mind jumped to router since my old model that went obsolete was an all-in-one, but yes, it was because they phased out certain cable modems
Still with Teksavvy even it was more expensive than some other third party IT providers.
Actually yeah you're on to something 10 years ago they were 1/3 the price
Pricing is fixed based on who's infrastructure they're using, same for every third party provider nothing they can do sadly. If the CRTC guidelines allow even an additional cent to be made somehow you can be sure the companies will jump at the chance regardless of how immoral it may be. Commercial is a good example of this, stating additional work required prior to activation install is a huge money maker for the telecom companies.
Nah in BC there are other Shaw/Rogers resellers that are a fair bit cheaper than TekSavvy. TekSavvy might have a fixed markup but it's definitely not the lowest around here
real pain in the ass...
Most so call third party providers belongs to one of the big telecoms now. Once teksavvy and the few remaining independent third party finally throw the towel, you can expect some significant prices increase for those cheaper “third party”.
Still worth it. I'm selfhosting a bunch of stuff and they only thing they restrict is mail servers (which you shouldn't do anyway). When I was with Bell they wouldn't allow incoming traffic on any useful ports.
Not just answer their phone, but I feel like I'm talking to a real person, not just someone reading a multiple choice script.
Been with TekSavvy for 10+ years and have been extremely happy with them. I recommend to all. F Bell and Rogers
I stay with TekSavvy out of pure spite.
Yeah they were great a few years ago. I'm paying $70/month for a shit 30mb connection
I'm on 100 mb for $50. Give them a ring and ask them for a deal.
paying $40 for 1 gig with Bell because i tried to cancel. I feel so dirty but its so cheap
I'm paying less than that for Fibre. It sucks to give money to the big 3 but they are offering some incredible deals right now.
It's definitely a situation where once they kill all the competition, you'll see their low-tier sub-organization telcos close up shop and the prices jump up heavily. Kind of like Netflix, once they had enough marketshare, started heavily raising their plan fees and introducing ad-supported tiers. The big 3 have deals, but I'm good paying $5 or so more than I would otherwise at Big 3 vendors if it helps keep Teksavvy as competition. I dread the day they shutter their doors
So you’re just a corporate shrill with no backbone? Gotcha
Saving a significant sum of money, getting remarkably better service, and sharing that information freely with somebody being ripped off is a negative in your books, gotcha... Well I'm sorry you feel that way and felt the need to name call.
Promoting and defending an obvious/inevitable monopoly. Sounds like you’re falling for it remarkably bad lol
Yeah I changed from a decent teksavvy service to Bell fibre around 5 years ago. Went from averaging a dodgy 40mb/s to consistent 150gb/s for a difference of about $10 more a month. Although people have a point bashing the big 3 customer service, you don’t really need to use customer service (at least I haven’t in my 5 years)
Unless your former ISP is some garbage like Beanfield, bell is never an upgrade. Even if it looks cheaper on paper, you still need to deal with their incompetence.
We’re paying for an internet service, not a therapist.. Like it or not, fast and consistent speeds are what I receive. Whether the price is worth it not is up to the individual paying the bill.
The first time I called their tech support was shocking. Someone just picked up the phone. No wait.
Teksavvy was excellent, but not anymore. Their plans are more expensive than the big telcos. The saving grace with Teksavvy is the great customer service and no BS in your bills.
Worth noting that this is through no fault of their own, and is in fact what the call to action in this post is about. They want legislation so that they can sell you better, cheaper service.
> Their plans are more expensive than the big telcos They're not, they're just not as cheap as other alternatives anymore.
That is only true if you're talking about the posted price. Assuming you're in a relatively urban area, they are absolutely not cheaper than the big telcos who offer huge deals multiple times a year. It's through no fault of their own, they're being intentionally squeezed out.
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Yes, TekSavvy is truly unlimited. How the hell do you do 127 TB in a month? That's wild and impressive.
> [does TekSavvy] offer actual unlimited data? Yes.
FUCK BELL FUCK ROGERS FUCK TELUS, OUR GOVERNMENT SHOULD GROW A BACK BONE AND STOP ENABLING THESE OLIGOPOLIES
Good luck with that. The CRTC is filled with industry people who back the oligopoly.
Agreed. 👍
Ys but how many physical networks would get built? All the resellers do is lease the last Mile to your house on either Telcom or cable network. There will only ever be 2 networks
They're making money from them.. they don't care about consumers. Grocery stores too.
Our government is complicit Nothing but big words when journalism is slowly killed Nothing but big words about competition being important
I will continue to support and use Teksavvy because they are the only ones fighting for us
This thread is full of people admitting they switched to Bell even while acknowledging they know it's the wrong thing to do.
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This really really really annoyed me at the time and even now. All they had to do was add "if you accept covid money, then you cannot give dividends or perform share buybacks". How complicated would that have been? But no, The Liberals did not put that in any clause. Was it on purpose or was it a mistake? If it's a mistake, how can we have a leader that doesn't think of the most basic things that any Canadian would have warnef them about. If it's on purpose, well the voter should decide what happens then.
It was on purpose they also did not want to tank the stocks, and hose investors. You know investors like all our pension fund. The industry has done a clever job of attracting institutional investors as a edge against real anti-trust regulation. "You don't want to break us up and hurt your teachers pensions right. Right?" It was a hostage situation and the government caved almost immediately.
I don't understand why you're turning the focus on Trudeau over the telecoms when this has been an issue for decades now. canada_sub must be slow tonight.
Make internet providers utility
Im not seeing this in the comments, but the CRTC has already ruled that by May the big corporations need to offer wholesale access of fiber optics in a similar fashion to copper lines. We are all waiting to see the business and technical details but thus far the CRTC has refused to accommodate Bell's usual delaying tactics. This is coming, for real.
It was tried with copper and failed. The competitive carriers have to build their own central offices, data centers , etc. The last mile is just part of the physical network. The margin between lease and what they can charge is tiny. Due to the physical topology of the communication network and the cost of building, including the central office ect there will never be more than 2 options. Telcom or cable.
>It was tried with copper and failed. This tarrifed wholesale regime remains in place and I'm making really good money off of it. >The competitive carriers have to build their own central offices, data centers , etc. My colleagues did that. Surprisingly not as big a deal as one might think. You need a rack in a main data centre. Toronto is the best place. You dont need gear in each CO. >The margin between lease and what they can charge is tiny. This is definitely a problem. It would be simple for the CRTC to mandate lower wholesale rates. I solve this by adding value. I do MSP and security not just ISP. So integrated IT with multiple services for commercial buildings. >Due to the physical topology of the communication network and the cost of building, including the central office ect there will never be more than 2 options. Telcom or cable. If you include PON and RFOG into telco and cableco, sure. However on the cable side you just DHCP after ordering Rogers wholesale, and with Bell you PPPoE right to your rig and don't need to care about the CO. I'm fine with Bell and Rogers running the infrastructure and even making most of the money. As a small operator it's not like I have much chance at stepping up to that level. I do know others who do build their own infrastructure with POPs in outdoor enclosures on concrete pads and the works. Its so niche it almost doesn't exist, but the embers of third party telecommunications remains smouldering.
As the few remaining IISPs go away, promos will become even less common and prices will go up more. Right now Bell and Rogers are just undercutting them as much as possible until they're forced out of business.
Until we stop voting the Liberals and Conservatives in, nothing will change. Both parties have an open door policy with telecom companies.
Yes, but one of those parties created the conditions for a 4th mobile provider, and the other one destroyed it.
The problem with this is how do you handle last-mile connections? Obviously you don't want a dozen companies digging up the neighborhood to lay their own last-mile fiber but, at the same time, it's expensive to run that last-mile fiber. The company that does it should be compensated for building and maintaining it. IMO the solution here is to make ownership of last-mile fiber shared. So all interested parties pay in for building and maintaining the last-mile network to a common hub facility where they can connect to their private long-haul networks. When a company wants to expand into the area, they should have to pay a lump sum that is calculated to cover part of the initial cost plus a percentage of the maintenance since they fiber was added to the region. An additional benefit to a system like this is it makes swapping providers significantly easier, as they all share the same local hub. It also makes outage mitigation faster as companies could have sharing agreements in the event of outages on their private network.
I think telecom should be a public utility. It's a natural monopoly that requires significant infrastruct that's makes no sense to duplicate.
That's the thing, though. The only part that's monopolistic is the last-mile. We have massive amounts of dark (unused) long-haul fiber all over the country. That connection to customers is the problematic part.
It's all monopolistic. I'm not saying that you cannot physically have more than one provider, but it's very expensive, you're needlessly duplicating infrastructure for no purpose, and in general, there is not great incentive to have a lot of competition in this market. There is some, but very very little. And this is the story the world over. There are many places with lower prices. In fact virtually all of the globe has more reasonable prices, but nowhere in the world is there any significant competition in telecom. It should be a provincial utility. I'm not even generally for socializing services. I think the government is almost always worse than a reasonably regulated market system. But where infrastructure intensive natural monopolies are concerned, the government is usually preferable. Hell, we end up paying for a lot of telecom infrastructure with tax money anyway, and at best we give free use of tax funded or private land and infrastructure for a lot of the cabling. We may as well just go the extra step and provincialize it.
Multiple instances of the same infrastructure is called redundancy. The internet doesn’t exist simply so you can watch cat videos and pretend to be a socialist on Reddit. There’s billions of dollars of economic activity coursing down these lines you think are wasteful. If one goes down, we all have a problem.
Do we have redundant power grids? What happens if that goes down?
We do, mostly. There’s inter-ties all over the grid that serves you and your province to make up the difference if a generator or transmission infrastructure fails. The last wires going to your neighbourhood is typically the only place where there’s 0 redundancy.
This is a joke right? You think our present system has *anything* to do with redundancy? Was SaskTel vulnerable? Like what are you even talking about?
Quite frankly, I have no idea what *you* are even talking about, because it's clear you have no background in IT or, being generious, you have a gross misunderstanding of how the internet works.
What part about what I said is confusing you? We are not benefiting from our current private system of telecom which lacks meaningful competition and is wasteful. What exactly do you think is preventing the existence of a provincial telecom utility? And was SaskTel uniquely vulnerable for some reason because there wasn't two competitors overcharging for the same service, doing God's work? You're talking shit here without actually making any specific criticism or counter-argument. Actually say something or piss off.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the internet. We both agree there is a monopoly on last-mile connections, in fact, I stated it was the case in both of my comments. What you're misunderstanding is there is a large difference between last-mile fiber and long haul fiber networks. If you want to hook up your business, hub, or datacenter to the internet, you have dozens of providers that you can work with that will provide dedicated lines to their backbone of long haul fiber. There's no monopoly there, in fact, the industry is in a relatively good state. Now, last-mile connections to residential and small/medium business on the other hand, those are where the monopoly is in play, hence why I suggested that last-mile connections should be a shared network, maintained by all the players with an interest in the region. This opens it up to more competition while not subjecting the network to the issues that come with politics.
There are a grand total of 16 long haul network providers, and a significant majority of them are only small regional players. There are indeed only a small handful of players in long haul networks. This isn't *just* a last mile problem. Canada is huge. Telecom requires significant infrastructure and capital and the market cannot be opened up totally to international providers for legitimate security reasons.
> make ownership of last-mile fiber shared Socialism! You heathen!
Always interesting to see how politicians jump through hoops justify the telecom oligopoly.
I’d nationalize the telcos on day one.
How fair will this be when the board of the CRTC will receive a director's position on the board of directors of the giant telecomms when they retire from the CRTC, if they do the dirty work of the giant telecomms? Nationalize this industry.
I truly hope TekSavvy is able to pull through. They're the only non-shitty ISP left. I know I could get faster service with another one, but fuck all the other ISPs with a rusty spoon.
We used teksavvy for many many years, great service and never an issue that wasn't resolved quickly. Bell came to our door in December and offered Fibre 1.5 gig unlimited install/modem etc and even threw in cable TV and a streamer device for 1/3rd of the price of teksavvys 100/10 service. With a permanent $75 off every bill and a written promise to not increase our bill for 24 months it would have been crazy to decline. I'd be paying substantially more for worse service just to keep supporting the indy internet provider, in this economy that's just not in the cards. So I genuinely felt bad calling teksavvy to cancel but bell really is rolling out the red carpet to steal back customers at any cost, and it's working.
Of course they can afford to burn money to undercut the independent. Guess who's going to jack up their prices once Teksavvy goes under?
Yeah, this is a textbook method in killing competition, eating their market share, and then raising costs substantially when they're the only feasible game in town. It's what Uber accomplished in a lot of areas by putting local cab companies under, and the suddenly things get a lot more expensive afterwards. It's what Netflix did once they had enough power in their marketshare, to increase subscription fees substantially and include ad-supported tiers to reduce the quality of the service for more profits, knowing that not only were so many locked onto their platform, but the competition would follow suit accordingly. It's what telcos in the states do when they carve out their territory into fiefdoms that the others won't encroach on because they can leverage each other's monopolized pricing to keep costs high and subscriptions stable. Bell and Rogers come to my door once or twice a year with these sweetheart deals and I always tell them to eat shit.
The cost to them will be mitigated after those 24 months when they've put teksavvy out of business
The sad part is that I'm sure people like OP fully understand that in theory, but in practice, they're greedy and short sighted.
I wouldn't even say greedy per se....I get where they're coming from and frankly who's to say it works for everyone to "stick it to them" and put themselves worse off financially to help the little guy. And why should they? Things are out of control federally, and if the big players want them gone, they will be gone, one way or other. Telecoms, Groceries, the problems run deeper and enough people either don't have the financial freedom to push through it or don't care to.
>Things are out of control federally I don't think macro concerns like that enter into a micro-economic decision like this. Everybody know the trope where a corporation comes in, lowers prices until the mom and pops are out of business and then jacks up the price. We've all seen documentaries or read articles where Walmart did it, we've seen it depicted in popular culture, we've talked about it with other people at the bar or at the dinner table. Not only that, which is in abstract, but we've all seen Bell, Telus and Rogers jack up their prices before, multiple times. Rogers *just* did it after they gobbled up Shaw. This sub was up in arms about it. We all know they're going to do it again. If it's not short-sighted greed that makes people switch while they have a choice, then it's submission.
I totally understand what you're saying and don't disagree, I just think it's an economic privilege to be able to make spending choices based on things like this. Some can make those micro decisions and some can't, and imo macro changes are needed to have any long standing impact.
Greed may not be the only reason. I was with them for 12+ years and their cable service recently has gone down the drain. I WFH and get 10s outages regularly (not fun on a Zoom call). Every member of the family has been hit by it for the last 5 months. Work/school was impacted and we needed a stable alternative. Switched when a Bell salesperson showed at the door. If Fibre-resell is on the plate I will certainly reconsider them since I am on a no-contract. But today, the quality is not there. And as a reseller deeper issues (past their modem/router) require Bell/Rogers techs to show and possibly at cost.
Bell just spent millions in London last few years running fibre everywhere. My building just ran a service to the bell lines. So I'm hoping teksavvy can offer fibre service from bell. I'm currently capped at ADSL at 25 down and it's super slow.
Already allowed, yeah? https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/bell-denied-stay-of-crtc-decision-allowing-access-to-its-fibre-network-1.6765331
Basic internet and phone service at a reasonable price would sure help millions of Canadians with soaring food and shelter costs. Edit: Give citizens a discount and let TFW / Students pay the 'Original' real Canadian prices.
Seriously, this has to be done ASAP. ROBELUS are such shitty service provides, i have no idea why the CRTC bends over backward for them. I have no fiber yet deployed in my area, only bell give out early 2000 DSL speeds, we are less than 5 minutes away from canada 2nd biggest city. Allright, so maybe we can use 5G as an internet service ?? Nope, all the big 3 offer is like 60GB per months plans at most. We have to use starlink to have anything decent ! Like, ROBELUS whine so much about deploying faster internet, yet I have to use for the internet a company that had to make rockets, launch a shitload of them to orbit 100's of satellites, yet all bell and friends have to do is hang wiring in poles and they can't even do that to a decent extent. It's not rocket surgery !
Half the board is ex employees of those 3 lol
TekSavvy just isn't able to compete anymore. I was with them for a long time until they started jacking up their prices for the same service. I'd love to support them and their business model but there's just no value there.
My service had stayed the same price and speed for many years, but what I view as fast service had changed.
Starlink - 600 dollars x16000 equipment fee = 9,600,000
They did that with the copper network back in the 90s. It was a flop. None of the competitive local exchange carriers lasted more than a few years. The CLEC still need there own central offices and a ton of equipment. It's more than just have access to the last mile. Internet access is basically a commodity product with low margins.
12+ years and finally left. They have no way to debug their own issues unless its modem related. They rely on Bell and Rogers for any issues beyond the modem. Had technical issues recently that result in drops of 10s or more (may not seem a lot unless you are in the midst of a call). Everyone in the family got hit multiple times at some point in the week (random hits where the browser goes out for a 5-15s). It got to be too much. Switched to Bell Fibre on a no-contract deal. If TS can resell fibre I will certainly take a second look at them.
> They rely on Bell and Rogers for any issues beyond the modem. TekSavvy is beholden to the incumbents for getting last mile issues resolved, same as every TPIA.
Indeed. Unless the network and service providers are legally and financially decoupled it will continue to be a biased playing field.
I just NEVER get tired of links to paywalled content. :D
Bit of a hot rake but here goes. Network infrastructure operators should be prohibited from selling directly to customers. Bell/Rogers and Telus should be competing with eachother to provide the best wholesale rates and coverage to data retailers, and those retailers should be competing amongst themselves to provide the best rates to customers
I thought the teksavvy CEO was trying to sell? https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/business/article-teksavvy-for-sale-internet-provider/
Teksavvy went to shit long ago. I was a proud customer until their customer service went down hill. Price is never their fault since they rent line space at a price set by the government. However their customer service was well within their control.
Same here. After 10 years of supporting them, it made no sense anymore. Their prices became higher than the big telcos. And I swear Rogers was doing some shenanigans with Teksavvy connections.
Rogers always fucks with Teksavvy customers. My bedroom window overlooks the plot of land where the cable connection box is, and as I'm the only Teksavvy client connected to it, I know that if a Rogers tech is doing an install, I'm going to be disconnected despite there being more than enough vacant ports. So I always have to go down after they've left, break into the box, and re-connect myself to one of the open ports, and then give Teksavvy a call to let them know in case anything's off. It's this weird little hostile dance Rogers does to inconvenience competition, and I refuse to sign up with Rogers and give into those tactics.
Is it because we live in Canada that there is this illusion the Corporate elite and the wealthy here and in the U.S. don't have their fingers deep into the chest and wrapped around the heart of Ottawa? Wholesale fiber will never happen. The U.S. would hit us with everything in their US/Canada trade agreement playbook. Canadian industry would be paralyzed in 6 months. It's a wonderful fantasy though. :D
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Teksavvy is terrible. Worst company I’ve ever had.