Internet Providers in Canada
As a forewarning, I am not very informed at all about this topic. I just have strong opinions about it right now and I am probably wrong about a lot of things. This will likely end up fairly biased and it’s from my, a consumer, point of view.
If you haven’t read my previous post about the NSA tracking your internet usage, this is somewhat an extension of it. In Canada, there are two major players in the Internet providing business: Rogers and Bell. There might be a third, but in Ontario, there really isn’t (maybe it’s Shaw). There are a bunch of other small providers but they mainly “piggyback” on Rogers and Bell’s network. Rogers and Bell resell their infrastructure to these smaller providers which in turn sell the service back to use. As I understand, Rogers mainly has cable and Bell with DSL. Thus, if you use TekSavvy like I do, Rogers technicians come around to install cable services, not TekSavvy.
Recently, I moved back for school and had to get another internet service installed. However, when the first Rogers technician came around, he hooked up the internet and showed that there was a signal but when I connected the modem, it never connected. After a week, another technician came and asked if a technician came before. He found that the cable was disconnected and looked like it was “tampered” with. Inside the cable box out in the back of the house. How could this be? The only person who touched those cables was the first technician, and the box is locked from what I can tell. Did the first technician “sabotage” us? This seems to be a recurring event on the DSLReports forum, where technicians seem to have to come more than once to fix a problem. That is the conspiracy theory now, Rogers is trying to sabotage Teksavvy’s business and lower their reputation CBC Article. By the looks of the article, if Teksavvy is to be trusted, then if Teksavvy has no problems at their end, and you (I) didn’t have a problem with my end (ie. modem or router issues), then the middle-man is to be blamed, right?
Next, Canadians don’t exactly get the best internet plans for the pricing. For comparison, I am using Teksavvy’s 25Mbps down, 2Mbps up and 300GB/mo usage cap for ~$40 + tax. The alternative plan from Rogers is 25Mbps down, 2Mbps up, 80GB/mo usage for $55 + tax. So the extra $15 could be going into customer support (Teksavvy’s support isn’t too good, maybe it’s too small for the amount of issues). But even still, you’re paying more for less; 80GB is peanuts for 4 or 5 software/computer engineering students.
But how is Teksavvy selling more internet usage for less than Rogers, if Teksavvy is just using Rogers’ network? A mystery indeed. On top of that, the Usage Based Billing fiasco a few years ago really sparked some fires. The CRTC wanted to price internet usage by the amount used, ie GB used per month, much like paying for gas. However, the prices were obscene, a 25GB cap with $1-$2 per GB used over this cap. Now one gigabyte is more expensive than a litre of gasoline. And a 25GB cap is measly; even Bell admits that over 10% of their users go over their cap. But Teksavvy and other estimates say that a GB can be transferred for a few cents, at most. So what if 1GB costs 3 cents to transfer? Then $1.97/GB is pure profit? Laughable. Wikipedia page: Internet in Canada
The players in Canada are too entrenched at the moment. When the rumor Verizon may come to Canada, Bell immediately went to action opposing this motion. Sure, I understand that the implications might not be “fair for Canada” (and Verizon was going for the wireless market). Profit margins might shrink and layoffs may be inevitable if Verizon came. But from a consumer point of view, we would be seeing more competition; another big player. Telus, Rogers and Bell lobbied hardcore to keep Verizon out. Bell bought full page advertisements, radio ads, etc. which were what I would describe to be propaganda. “Not Fair for Canada!”, “Do the right thing!”
It’s a very frustrating experience in Canada, we’re the 20th heaviest internet users but the value of our internet can be sub-par to some smaller Asian and European countries with little changes in sight.