A recent ruling by Canadian regulator the CRTC all but guarantees Canadians will face steadily increasing costs for Internet. The recent ruling forces third party Internet providers to provide only metered bandwidth – pay per gigabyte. While in theory there is nothing wrong with paying for services you use , there are several issues that make this ruling troubling. Canada does not allow foreign companies to compete for service in Canada, creating an artificial market from the start.
This applies to cellular service as well, making Canada one of the most expensive countries in the world for cell phone service as well. Now let's get to cable. Essentially, the country in carved up into fiefdoms, with two dominant players – Rogers and Shaw effectively owning the wires and cable service in their regions. Bell and Telus also provide Internet service via their phone lines and some fiber.
Third party Internet providers buy there bandwidth from the big players. But here is the kicker: Rogers, Shaw and Bell are also in the television broadcast business.
Could this simply be a way to ensure revenues as traditional revenues from television migrate to Internet service based ones? You bet.
But hey, I am Canadian and I'm mad as hell!
0 comments:
Post a Comment