CRTC allows smaller internet companies to sell service over telecoms' fibre networks
Regulator says its review found a significant competitive decline in Ontario and Quebec
There is literally ONE independent ISP left in Ontario. Too little too late CRTC.
That's by design.
Except they're hardly any small ISPs left. ROBeLUS bought lost of them.
I'm with TekSavvy, but last I heard they're also selling...
Good news: they're no longer selling. Their press release in response to the CRTC decision says at the end, "TekSavvy further confirmed that it is not currently for sale".
Yeah, I'm with EBox but they got bought by Bell. I am awaiting the degradation of service.
Assuming the setup ends up similar to how it is in NZ, the barrier to entry to either found a new ISP, or for an existing ISP (even from another area) to set up shop, is really really low.
We now have far too many fibre ISPs and resellers to keep track of - a few dozen. It's like the days of dial up.
They were already allowed to sell service over the fibre networks, the problem was that the CRTC regulated wholesale prices they'd have had to pay in order to do so were higher than the retail prices charged to residential customers by Bell.
The new and improved CRTC regulated wholesale prices are something like 50% lower than the previous ones iirc, but still higher than the retail prices charged by Bell.
This is disappointing, but not exactly surprising. They've been doing a bad job of it since 2006 and continue to do so. The independent ISP market is already 95% gone. This is both too little and too late. The problem seems to be too complicated for politicians to understand, and the regulatory capture too thorough for any well-meaning bureaucrats trapped in the system to overcome.
I don't think it's right to call it "wholesale" when it's not priced far enough below retail to matter.
Given that our governments have been unwilling to make the necessary infrastructure public, I don't think that it should have ever been legal to both own the infrastructure and sell retail services.
Well, it's wholesale-like in that it doesn't include the various expenses involved in providing service at the retail level such as doing tech support and billing for millions of customers.
This is like... 5+ years too late...
All our independents piggyback off the two major players here.
CRTC doing an amazing job 🙃
Something that I've found that's counterintuitive is that there's more ISP competition rurally than in cities. In a rural setting anyone can slap a radio on a tower and get access to a reasonable number of homes. With 60GHz equipment showing up, the speed isn't terrible either.
This might be true for fibre as well, but you don't see that as much. Our independent ISP has been busy trenching all over the county. Certain towns have direct access, while every one else benefits from fixed-wireless towers having direct fibre connection.
In the city you just can't do direct line-of-sight wireless, and while your customers are more tightly packed, trenching in fibre must be a non-starter for anyone that isn't Telus/Bell/Rogers.
Who are the independent players still? Thought they all got bought out, or were actively looking to GTFO of the market and sell.
TekSavvy, which was also looking for a seller earlier this year, says it's "not currently for sale."
https://mobilesyrup.com/2023/11/08/teksavvy-calls-out-crtc-for-its-flawed-internet-decision/
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Canada's national telecommunications regulator says it will allow independent competitors to sell internet services over the large telephone companies' fibre networks in Ontario and Quebec.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced the decision Monday at the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto amid an ongoing review of third-party access to fibre networks intended to boost competition and lower prices for customers.
In March, the CRTC announced it would lower some wholesale internet rates by 10 per cent as it launched its review into the rates that smaller competitors pay the major telecom companies for access to their networks.
It included an expedited probe of whether big carriers should provide smaller competitors with access to their fibre-to-home networks.
The CRTC says its review found there has been a significant competitive decline in Ontario and Quebec, where independent internet providers currently serve 47 per cent fewer customers than two years ago.
The regulator says today's move is meant to stabilize the market in areas where it will make a significant impact on choice and affordability for consumers, in line with Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne's direction earlier this year for the CRTC to enhance consumer rights.
The original article contains 222 words, the summary contains 192 words. Saved 14%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
The CRTC can go fuck itself.