Canada Splits Local Phone, DSL Services

s20451 writes "Running counter to the recent string of pro-consolidation FCC rulings in the United States, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ruled that big Telcos like Bell and Telus must offer ADSL service even when local phone service is provided by another company. Effectively this ruling splits local phone and net services, opening both up for competition and lower prices. Press release here."

so...

In my area, ADSL is much slower than Cable, I'll stick with my cable and my connection that isn't capped as low as ADSL

Re:so...

"In my area (Toronto), DSL is much faster than cable. I get 3.5Mbs/800Kbs for about CAD$50. Cable isn't an option as it is only offered one company (Rogers), and it's a horrible one at that."

That DSL is a sweet package, but cable is not quite so 'horrible' as you describe. Rogers cable is 1.5M/256K for $45 and it works just fine. (The intro rate for the first 4 months is $25.) In the short intervals when I lived in Toronto for business purposes (about 7 months) I *never* had a problem with it except ones that were related to my own cable box. (Some assclown tampered with it.) It worked up to the advertised speeds and my bittorrent client was very happy compared to the ultra-lame 28.8 dialup at home. (There is no broadband or even 56K available at home from any provider. Stupid rural areas.)

Clearly rogers cable is less cost effective than your DSL, but I DSL's hidden cost is that you have to pay for a phone line as well. I just rely on my cell and forego the landline. I only needed rogers long enough to scrap it at the end of getting the intro rate and then move out of TO again, but I can say for sure that it was not 'horrible.'

Oh I could only wish...

... that someone here would work to implement this in the United States. It would mean that companies like Verizon and Qwest wouldn't have the stranglehold on broadband that they currently do...

In Phoenix, we have two different Cablemodem providers, with some fairly significant overlapping coverage, but all of the independent DSL line providers for residential closed except for Qwest, and Qwest still uses Pair Gain, which kills DSL.

hmm

This is quite good news. I'm glad we aren't following the US.

I love living here :)

They'll just bypass this edict...

...by pricing it ridiculously high. If they get suckers who sign up, then they profit. If they don't, well they really didn't want the business anyway.

Re:They'll just bypass this edict...

That's fine. As long as they offer it to everyone, indiscriminately, at that price. Including internal customers.

Anything else is price discrimination, which I'd bet is illegal in Canada.

Offering it at absurd prices will merely kill it outright and drive customers to alternate providers and/or services. This is the entire idea behind deregulation, and if it's implemented properly it can work.

When it's implemented improperly, however, it becomes a nightmare and causes far more problems than existed previously -- for examples on badly done public utility deregulation see California's electric power dereg or Georgia's natural gas dereg. Either one is a case study in how not to do it, and between the two they've frozen dereg pushes on power or natural gas across the US.

Still no adsl-only service

Unfortunately, the decision only applies if you have service from some telco - it doesn't make it possible to have ADSL-only service for those of us who use our cell phones as our only voice line.

Should happen soon, though - you can already order internet access from cable companies w/o subscribing to their TV services.

yay canadians!

such sensible people!

maybe next they'll force computer manufacturers to offer alternative OSses on computers, to open up competition and lower prices.

I'm an American

I'm an American, you insensitive clod!

Re:I'm an American

I'm an American

I'm Sorry.

Re:I'm an American

I'm Sorry.


You forgot the URL: Colin Mochrie as Reporter Anthony St. George offers a public apology to America. [22minutes.com]

Will it work out much better than in the US?

The phone companies are already basically monopolies, and here they were willing to sell their DSL at a loss for a few years to put other DSL providers out of business. Sure, they had to share the lines under the law, they just made it difficult and expensive.

Ouch.

Bell was losing hundreds of subscribers a day due to their bandwidth capping earlier this year, and now they have to provide ADSL service to really small markets where it will cost them more to upgrade the infrastructure to support ADSL than they could possibly make in revenues from customers?

Sell your Bell stock! ;)

Re:Ouch.

Read the ruling again. They're not required to provide ADSL everywhere (which would entail huge upgrade costs).

What they do need to do is provide ADSL, in areas that they already serve, to customers who use local phone service from someone else.

A word of caution:

We split our national phone company, and it turns out the rates kept going up while the level of service went down. Apparently, there's some sort of economic force called "scale economy" that reflects the fact that having multiple companies providing the same service means a lot of costly redundancy.

Some monopolies should be broken, but others are better off regulated. We got Unix out of AT&T, but I'm not even getting reliable Caller ID out of the local tel.

Re:A word of caution:

We split our national phone company, and it turns out the rates kept going up while the level of service went down.

We split up our ADSL providers in the UK, and service went up while costs went down with the exception of the services offered by the old monopolist.

They offer the worst service with the worst reliability at almost the highest cost - now imagine how bad it would be if they had no competition at all?

too bad for the bells

If Canada bell is anything like the bells over in the US, they had it coming. The US bells have been abusing people for over 100 years. Normally I'm for the free market system, but sometimes, enough is enough. (note that if we hadn't granted them a naturally monopoly in the first place, perhaps we wouldn't have the problems we do now).

Two edged sword

Effectively this ruling splits local phone and net services, opening both up for competition and lower prices

This also opens up the possibility of finger-pointing and blame assigning, instead of problem resolution. A couple of years ago, I had difficulty getting DSL from DirecTV DSL over BellSouth's phone lines - rather than solving my problem, the two companies used me as a message carrier in their blame war. I gave up, got a cable modem, and haven;t looked back.

Does this mean...?

They have unbundled local service and dsl so that people don't have to pay for a land line to get high speed internet access? So a person could just subscribe to the high speed service and do his own internet telephony?

But, can they still compete with cable?

Sure, opening up things to competition would be nice, but at the moment, there's two big things that hold me back from using Bell's ADSL: the monthly bandwidth cap, and the speed. I'm with Rogers, and they decided to hold back on implementing a similar plan until they were done seeing how Bell fared with it... and they haven't implemented it yet. :) Plus I've found that my cable connection is often faster than friends of mine who went with Bell.

From where I'm sitting, it costs about the same for Bell or Rogers. The unlimited bandwidth and increased speed that Rogers offers is very nice, considering that I have roommates whose downloading habits I can't control.

In other words, the telcos can compete with themselves all they like, but (at least in my situation) it's a moot point if they still can't really compete with cable.

Re:But, can they still compete with cable?

From where I'm sitting, it costs about the same for Bell or Rogers.

I've been using smaller ISPs for DSL, and they're a lot better. Bell Nexxia owns the DSL network. Sympatico 'rents' the lines/bandwidth from Nexxia to provide high-speed internet. The problem with Sympatico is that they rent a certain amount of bandwidth for a geographical area (well, really, per-CO switchbox), and if they happen to have 300 subscribers in that area, they all have to share that limited amount of bandwidth, which is why it is often very slow.

The smaller ISPs will actually purchase 1.2mbit of bandwidth (or whatever plan you have) per customer. If they have 10 customers in that area, they get 12mbit of bandwidth (in reality, they probably maintain a ratio, but the effect is the same). As number of users increases, they get more bandwidth. As a result, my DSL is a lot faster than a friend of mine's who lives in the same building but is on Sympatico.

Discrimination against competitors?

From the article:

...by refusing to provide retail high-speed Internet services to competitors' customers, incumbent telephone companies are unjustly discriminating against their competitors and giving themselves an undue preference.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for more competition. But "unjustly discriminating against their competitors"? And "undue preference"? Since when is it bad to give your own company "preference", and who are they to say it is "undue"?

This looks to me like socialism at work under the guise of capitalism. In the one hand, they uphold the virtues of competition, and in the other, they take away the rights of businessmen to decide how they compete. *shrug*

land line telephone services = days are numbered

Interesting - let the competition begin.

However, we'll all be wireless before too long, and there will be no place for DSL - unless this market competition drives the overall costs down. Who wants to pay for local phone service (if you're already paying for it with your wireless plan) if you just want DSL, which would then be an additional cost to the local line?

$30 local phone
+$60 DSL service
-----------------
($50) Digital Cable + ($45) Cable Internet

Assumption: You already pay $35 for a cellphone.

Sure, I'll take 125 channels as a perk for my decision making skills.

I hope this will make it harder for my decision making skills, it's amazing how quickly you learn that you have 125 channels and nothing is ever on!

You must not live in Canada.

Bell ADSL 1mbps/256k in the Ottawa area is $25/mo. In most cases, cheaper than the rest of your phone bill.

Not pro-consolidation

Stupid Slashdot...

The FCC rulings of late are NOT pro-consolidation, but simply anti-regulation.

The FCC is very simply recognizing that its place in the system is changing with the times.

This is one of those VERY rare times where a governmental organization has decided to limit its own powers, and Slashdot's complaining! The experts employed at the FCC recognize that its place is changing, and it shows the integrity to reign itself in, and the uninformed morons in Congress object!

Re:Not pro-consolidation

Most people would consider it a good thing to have more than two media companies in a country as large as the US.

Mass media equals power. Concentration of power is bad.

Don't forget that a diverse and critical media is one of the pilars of modern democracy.

Pay attention

I think you missed the gist of the ruling from the FCC in the last big mess over DSL. It is an ugly, ugly mess. They did NOT back away from regulation as you suggest-- the ruling *requires* the telephone companies to share their networks for local phone service. However, they did end the requirement for linesharing of the "last mile" for alternative DSL companies.

If you had to regulate one or the other, which would you have picked? The one that requires the telcos to allow competitors to use their entire network to sell phone service? Or the one that allows companies with their own nationwide backbone infrastructure (like Covad) to use JUST the last-mile portion of the lines?

I REALLY don't understand why they picked what they did. It's not pro-consolidation OR anti-regulation. It's the worst possible combination of choices. It's no wonder there is widespread objection. Although most of the "nerd news" reporting painted the decision as one that was bad for nerds (no more DSL competition)-- mainstream press widely reported it as a terrible loss for the telcos (because they have to basically do all the infrastructure for their POTS competitors). Now, if a decision screws everybody (dsl users, dsl competitors, AND the telcos)-- it can't possibly be doing any of us any good. What the hell was the FCC thinking?

whats the big deal eh?

Its not really all that big of a deal . From a competition perspective bell is allready forced to allow all of the tiny little ISPs access to there lines for ADSL equipment , we have tones of little tiny hs providers competing for our business (see http://www.canadianisp.com/ for a good list of them) . I mean I dont really want bell ADSL service , it sucks and neither do I want telus ADSL service , I want the little tiny independt companies that I can already chose from :-) .

Way to go!

A few months ago I acquired a cell phone from Rogers AT&T. Soon I realized that having a cellphone and a landline phone seem redundant. So I cancelled my landline and have all my voice calls through my mobile phone. But cancelling the landline phone (from Telus) means I cannot get their ADSL service. Have to use the alternate Cable service offered by my Cable company. The decision means ADSL service does not have to be tied to you having a landline phone account Good job CRTC

It's really true...

I read an article [cnn.com] 2 days ago regarding Dismayed Americans who contemplate moving to Canada because the States had become too conservative and there was a quote which stood out from the rest..

"Canada has an opportunity to define itself as a leader," Hanley said. "In some ways, it's now closer to American ideals than America is."

And it's more evident with the recent news that we keep hearing how Canada is moving forward while the States are slipping into regress by way of draconian laws and regulations a la DMCA, Super-DMCA, Media Consolidation, etc.

Re:It's really true...

> But the biggie is socialism. Bad bad bad socialism. Socialism is authoritarian communist crap.

No. Socialism is socialism, and communism is communism. Equating socialism with communism is typical American ignorance.

Re:"Good riddance" I say!

Can't resist a good troll...

Taxes aren't that bad here, especially when you factor in the cost of medical insurance. (I make ~$60k/yr CDN and pay about 28% taxes without loopholes, so duh!) For some, they're better than having an equivalent position in the USA, as they discover when they move down and experience user-pays-for-everything, and they move back to Canada for economic reasons. It all depends on cost-of-living in various regions, and even the region of Canada or US one moves to, as well as the income bracket you're in. I've found that the moderately wealthy complain about taxes consistently, if they're from a somewhat socialized industrial nation.

If I get cancer, I can still change jobs or provinces without losing my medical benefits or paying disproportionately. That's not commie, that's humane, you twit!

One other thing... gross disparity of income leads to other extremely expensive social ills, like massive prisons, health problems, badly educated populace, violence and insecurity, drug use, despair, riots, and extreme cultural stress. It's a hidden cost, and we canucks have our share of these problems. I think it's hilarious that 'Americans' consider us socialized pinkos!

Besides, isn't Robin Hood a hero? You presume that the rich never steal from the poor.

Sweet!

I've had Bell ADSL in Toronto for almost 3 years now. Setup was a pain, and I had problems with it about one year later for a few days, but other than that it's been rock solid, and very reliable performance. Not FAST - 128kbps up, 1mbps down - but I know I can get those speeds any time.

Of course... 3 years later, I find myself paying more for less. Speed hasn't increased at all (why would it?), the price has gone up a few dollars, and they've introduced monthly transfer limits - 10GB combined upload/download, with absurd prices for extra bandwidth. What ticks me off is that they still advertise it as "unlimited".

There are other, smaller, local DSL providers - but the speed and prices are comparable.

Maybe this will finally help advance an industry that's been stagnant - from the consumer's point of view - for over 4 years now!

Hehehe... oh I kill myself... I really do...
*keeps looking for a way to afford SDSL*

I don't know what thats necessary....

I work for a CLEC in the US and I really don't see why thats necessary. I'm sure we would offer a discount to customers who purchased phone service and DSL from us, the ILECs should be allowed to sell whatever packages they want as well. Allowing the little guy access to the lines is one thing, but regulating how they can sell their packages is too much.

Telus DSL

Telus, the big telco out here in the west, offers a good DSL service. They have not begun to enforce any capping, unlike the cable companies, and the speed is much better than many (if not most) of the US residential DSL providers...

I don't think this announcement will have nearly the impact in the west that it will have in the central and eastern parts of Canada. Out here, there really aren't any viable competing telcos, and Telus allows other companies to resell DSL under other brand names (for the same price, as far as I can tell) so who you get DSL from seems pretty irrelevant at this point.

Being able to get DSL-only service would be cool, however. I know people who really don't need a land line, but they have it just to get the DSL service.

Bell and Telus

Not only do they "lose" the case but they
get Slashdotted!
(I am joking because hopefully these guys have the
capacity to handle it.)

Carte blanche in the Midwest

The gov't of my town (the most conservative city in MN) decided that it would be best for the city to let Charter Communications have free reigns as the sole provider (carte blanche).

The happiness this contributes to my life is undescribable... somewhere between the lowest rates for my modem/tv and outstanding service I receive makes me actually consider Canada as someplace I might actually consider living...

"Canada is kind of like a loft apartment over a great party" - Robin Williams

-Brad

woo

After some nasty customer service from Bell I switched to Sprint for my local phone service. Was I ever surprised to find out that I was unable to get DSL after the switch. IGS is a great little DSL company but because they lease lines from Bell I was still unable to get service.

I had to go with Rogers Cable, which isn't a whole lot different then Bell sympatico

Someone else offers local phone service?

Maybe I is dumb, but I live on the canadian east coast, where there is only one phone company, no dsl, and no cable modem service at all. What good does this actually do? Telus can't even sell cellular phones right, I doubt they can do DSL effectively.

Brain drain from US?

How much longer is it going to be before eveyone in the US smarter than a brick has left for some other country with sensible laws? Or maybe its already happened and im too dumb to know it?

better and better

Between stuff like this, and Coffee crisps, Canada keeps looking better and better.

Now if they would just do something about the GST...

Damn Canada, you've almost convinced me

to emigrate. The real land of the free. Issues like this seem to always favor the consumer and small business rather than the conglomerate. Pot is not-illegal. Gays are free to marry while in the US they have to fight to keep the police out of their bedrooms. Not everyone is considered a terrorist until proven otherwise. Unfortunately you are still amazingly too anti-gun for my tastes.

Seriously, why didn't the big guys win? They always win here. Are your politicians not for sale? Or are your corporations too cheap to buy them?

It's about time!

Bell's Sympatico service is honestly the worst. I switched to Rogers cable because I absolutely despised them. Not to mention the 10GB cap on transfers which Rogers doesn't have. I'm really hoping some of the local DSL providers will step up to the plate and force Bell to change their ways. This deregulation should force Bell to drop the 10GB limit, or at least up it to something more reasonable. A SuSE distro can be 7 CD's and there goes 1/2 of your transfer.. WTF? It should also give their customers a choice, because Cable is unbearably slow in some areas and technically isn't a viable option. Another strike for the good guys. Now if the CRTC could only deregulate Cable TV so I have a choice where my money goes and allow me to watch US Network TV over the web via services like jumpTV [jumptv.com] and then I'll be completely happy.

Ah Canada...

Is there anything they can't do?

Huh?

I'm sorry, I'm from the US. What is this "competition" you speak of? Is that a new service offered by Verizon? Something from Comcast perhaps? How much does it cost on top of all the other charges that make my monthly billing statement thicker than the King James Bible?

Help! Is there cheap local service in Ontario?

I realize this is a bit off-topic, but my girlfriend is getting her own apartment for school in the fall, and I've been trying to find the best deal for local phone service. I haven't had much luck, and right now it looks as though Bell might have the cheapest service (their website says $20-28). Is there cheaper service to be found in Ontario?

She's also looking for Internet access, which is why she didn't just go the cell phone route. I was hoping to find a local phone service provider with a promotion or discount for buying both local phone and Internet service, but haven't found anything. Thanks for any help/advice in advance! =)

Doesn't this bother anyone else??

After all, the wire is private property owned by a private company. How do you justify some sanctimonious twit in parliament (or whatever you canuks have) just stepping in & forcing them to provide a service they'd rather not?
Doesn't anyone in that godforsaken ice-pit believe in property rights?

We can only hope

wish we had this in California... I'm tired of paying Verizon for a voice line (that I don't use) just so I can get DSL service.

Warning: Bell retaliates.

If you switch then get ready for some pain.

Bell Cancelled my service early, pulled the card from the local office (only to put it back 3 days later), cut my phone service for a day and a half, and further messed up the line for 5 days until Echo complained directly to Bell.

Switching DSL service providers should be as simple as changing your authentication (username + password). Well Bell doesn't like making things easy.

I switched to Echo online's DSL service because on the 26th of June Bell Sympatico started blocking all inbound port 25 connections.

I was wondering if anyone else has similar problems, is anyone annoyed enough to start a class action? (I have no interest in investing the time, but if you want to rant try class.action at marks.______.net)

FWIW: I thought it was funny to mention Echo Online does not have OS myopia, they [www.eol.ca] ackowledge, Linux, *BSD and even Sega Dreamcast as possible client OSs.

Bad decision.

I think the CRTC's decision is a bad one. In my area, the telco is a Crown Corporation, which is owned by the people(SaskTel [sasktel.com]). We paid the money to lay the telecommunications infrastructure via taxes, and cost of service, and now some other company can come, and capitalize on our expenditures. This is ludicrous. If the CRTC was truly all for competition, it would allow our television over DSL (SaskTel MAX [sasktel.com] to be packaged separate from the broadband internet service. They would also force cable companies such as Shaw Cable [www.shaw.ca] and Rogers Cable [rogers.ca] to open up their broadband infrastructure to competing cable companies. Broadband prices are a drop in the bucket in Canada compared to other parts of the world, including some areas of the United States, where a 384kbit/s connection costs someone as much or more than a 3mbit/s DSL connection would cost me here in Canada. ($99CDN/mo), or a 2mbit/s DSL connection ($60CDN/mo).

Re:It's aboot time!

Sorry mate, but Labatt's has been an Interbrew company for some time now. Interbrew is Belgian.

Molson would be a better choice. It's only 20% owned by Miller and another 20% by Phillip Morris.

Re:Fucking Finally... Telus ADSL blows

Atleast you can get their ADSL, over on vancouver island your lucky to get dialup which runs like 33k and is limited to 100hr/month for almost as much as the cost of ADSL... Telus said ADSL is comming here soon, that was three years ago.