Bell, Bell Aliant, MTS, SaskTel and Telus, which today are the main installers of fibre optic cable in Canada, have argued that being forced to share the cables will eliminate their incentive for building them.
But the CRTC said big telephone companies in practice have no choice but to continue installing fibre optic infrastructure, or risk losing market share to big cable companies like Rogers and Shaw. That’s because without fibre optics, the telephone companies are stuck using copper cables that can only offer a maximum of about 50 mbps. The coaxial cable used by Rogers and Shaw is already capable of carrying 100 mbps.
I don’t really know how these things work but always seemed to me that the government should own and operate the cables and sell out the endpoints. A private company could roll their own but that would at least give a minimum quality guarantee. In practice, especially in the US, I think this would have many difficulties but in other parts of the world, with a stronger sense of solidarity, I think it would work well.
I don’t know that I’d argue for public ownership, but I certainly think that there’s a compelling public interest in divestiture of ISP services from physical infrastructure. As a Torontonian who is happy with the service I get from a copper connectivity reseller, and who lives in a soon to be FTTP neighborhood, this news excites me.
I like this part from the cbc.ca article:
Too bad the FCC can’t deduct the same!
I don’t really know how these things work but always seemed to me that the government should own and operate the cables and sell out the endpoints. A private company could roll their own but that would at least give a minimum quality guarantee. In practice, especially in the US, I think this would have many difficulties but in other parts of the world, with a stronger sense of solidarity, I think it would work well.
I don’t know that I’d argue for public ownership, but I certainly think that there’s a compelling public interest in divestiture of ISP services from physical infrastructure. As a Torontonian who is happy with the service I get from a copper connectivity reseller, and who lives in a soon to be FTTP neighborhood, this news excites me.