10 ms·

People in other countries probably don't understand just how powerful - and depended upon - the big telecoms are here in Canada. They have no presence outside

• Johnny555 4y ago
  I think people in the USA understand bloated telecoms with monopoly power that means they don't need to compete. In my neighborhood, I have one effective ISP, that is the cable company (who offers phone+internet+cable), the other is an old-school phone company who offers DSL (with bonded DSL, up to 12mbit). I thought that I could get a slow DSL connection to back up my cable, but no, there's some neighborhood line concentrator that means I can't get DSL at any speed. So I really have only one ISP to "choose" from. (well, in theory I could get Starlink, but my area is still waitlisted, as is Verizon 5G home internet)
  • edgefield 4y ago
    Having lived in Canada and the US, with telecom plans with providers in both countries, I think Canada’s telecoms take it to a new level. To give you a sense of how distorted the market is, it was cheaper for me to keep my US Verizon wireless plan than to use Rogers, Fido, etc. when I lived in Canada!
    • jamal-kumar 4y ago
      I do this. Unlimited (international!) roaming and everything isn't that expensive (Only about 100$) compared to whatever insane amount I'd be paying if I had some ripoff, under 5 gigabyte or whatever pittance data capped Canadian phone plan for no reason. I also maintain a Central American phone plan that doesn't cost me very much either (2$ every 3 months just to keep the number outside of the country and receive SMS/use chat apps basically, but I don't do roaming when out of that region - When in the region, I spend maybe 20$ a month). Since the Rogers website is down (Great sales strategy!) I can refer anyone curious to a portion of their menu from some image I found; [1] 95$CAD (500MB until you hit overage) + 60$ for 'roam like home' (no mention of data, canadians still use SMS way too widely), and then probably more to up that data cap with no guarantee that applies to roaming? Yeah, no thanks! Oh yeah, the cops just install malware on your shit with reckless abandon, too. [2] I see no reason to consider Canadian nationality as anything but a nice passport at this point. [1] https://cdn.mobilesyrup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/rogers-travel-packs.jpg https://cdn.mobilesyrup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/roger... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/07/canada-police-spyware-admission-surveillance-experts https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/07/canada-police-...
      • nabaraz 4y ago
        I've heard they stop your service if your roaming is half of your data plan.
        • jamal-kumar 4y ago
          Wow, that's incredibly rude. I've never experienced something like that outside of Canada before. Like what are you even paying roaming for if they pull stuff like that? Is there any acknowledgement that some of us are actually abroad most of the time?
          • matheusmoreira 4y ago
            Telecoms routinely sell people services based on the assumption people won't use them. This gigabit link? The user isn't ever going to saturate it, right? They are pretty much immediately proven wrong and get angry because their infrastructure is over capacity. That they can get away with this false advertising astounds me to this day.
        • mattm 4y ago
          I've heard something similar but that they'll stop service if you're out of the US for over 6 months.
      • joelmeckert 4y ago
        My Rogers plan is $90 for 65 GB of data, it is unnecessary (average use for me is 4 GB/month), but better than going over or throttled. When I was supporting an MPLS Rogers fibre connection, we had zero downtime in 2.5 years.
        • jamal-kumar 4y ago
          I bet you could twist their arm into a better deal if you spend a while complaining on the phone about today. I do a lot of my work off of a mobile hotspot so I'm not tied to an office or home. I try to make the most of what's paid for and it goes very far. I think that if you're getting a decent price it's probably just customer retention at that price point. If they're ripping anyone off widely at the prices I saw, it's new customers... Immigrants etc, pretty nasty.
  • amscanne 4y ago
    I have a lot of experience in both places. Americans may think think they do, but I don’t think so. As bad as Comcast and others are in the USA, I have found them to be far more efficient and competitive than Rogers or Bell in Canada. Same for banks in Canada. It’s unbelievable what they do and get away with. And airlines. Rather, Airline. I believe there’s a cultural element here: Canadians are more risk adverse and place a higher value on “established” companies and brands. This influences consumer behavior and legislation (Canadians don’t seem to care about laws that make it hard or impossible for market entrants).
    • jonahrd 4y ago
      I'm a US citizen, Canadian permanent resident. I think it has to do with the fact that historically much of Canada's lands/provinces were literally just land owned by very massive British crown corporations. Massive corporations are baked into the history of Canada as a political entity.
      • hackbinary 4y ago
        No. "Crown Land" in Canada is owned by the provinces. There is no such thing as a "British Crown Corporation." Crown Corporations are a Canadian thing. I lived in Canada for 30 years and now live in the Scotland. CalMac and Scottish Water are not "Crown Corporations," but are nevertheless owned and controlled by the Scottish Ministers. This is contrast to BC Ferries, ICBC, and BC Hydro which are Crown Corporations. In the UK there is something called the Crown Estate, which is somethint again different.
        • kelseydh 4y ago
          You're at a National Park. In Canada, it's crown land. In America, it's your park. The Canadian mentality is different.
          • hackbinary 4y ago
            National Parks are not Crown Land. National Parks are reserves of land owned and managed by the Federal Parks Department and development is not allowed on that land whatsoever. Crown Land is land owned and administered by the provinces. Crown Land can be licenced for many uses and sometimes it can be purchased. Also, Provincial Parks are not Crown Land.
  • throw7 4y ago
    I (america) also have only one internet provider to choose from (Spectrum TV, formerly Time Warner Cable). It's really annoying as just barely a mile away, my neighbor has a choice to use Verizon DSL (and does). -.- I dropped TV and a landline a long time ago, and use cell (google-fi/t-mobile). The annoying thing is all the spam mail I get from spectrum to bundle all the above for much lower than I'm paying now for an introductory rate. I don't want to play that game but it kills me what I could be saving for at least 6 months to a year.
    • dylan604 4y ago
      Spectrum is so incompetent that even if you were a Spectrum subscriber, they'd still spam you with those offers.
• walrus01 4y ago
  I work in telecom and tell this to nearly everyone who asks me about Canada, and its ISP/telecom market and competition... "Canada is an endangered species protection wildlife reserve park for dinosaur telecoms" It's a travesty that the government is actually going to let Shaw and Rogers merge to even further concentrate power in the hands of a few families and reduce market competition.
  • pseudoramble 4y ago
    In the article, it mentions that the Canadian government blocked this merger. I believe it said that was in April though. Has that changed, or did I misread what the reporting said? Just want to clarify in case I missed something.
    • walrus01 4y ago
      I would bet $100 they'll ultimately let it go through anyways due to the absurdly outsized political influence and lobbying of the equity shareholders of Shaw. One of the wealthiest families in the country.
    • LawnGnome 4y ago
      The Canadian government have put up a mild roadblock that will be addressed with non-substantive changes to the structure of the merger, enforced by a little known, toothless regulatory agency who will be instructed to look the other way. The regulatory environment Canadian telcos operate in is completely captured.
      • pseudoramble 4y ago
        Ah okay, this helps a bit. Not in Canada so I wasn't aware. Thanks for clarifying.
  • fivre 4y ago
    Practical experience working with Telus has been astounding. I have never met a set of system admins so incredibly ignorant of and incapable of using any of the systems they ostensibly run.
• gsatic 4y ago
  Most people also don't realize telcos rake in more revenue than the entire tech sector. And that it is no where close to enough to maintain or upgrade the pipes. Cloud has been built on lot of assumptions that are close to breaking point.
  • dylan604 4y ago
    The entire tech sector would not exist without the telcos. So there's that
    • donalhunt 4y ago
      Deploying infrastructure is not easy or cheap. But is clearly profitable if you can find investors to finance the capital spend. Google have tried to enter the FTTH market thinking there must be opportunities to innovate and reduce the cost to consumers. But even they have struggled due to the complexities of deploying fiber in the existing built environment...
      • doubled112 4y ago
        Google was trying to get started with the flushable fiber, right?
• pid-1 4y ago
  Isn't that true in most countries? Is there any place in the world that can claim to have a diverse, competitive Telco market?
  • walrus01 4y ago
    for last mile ISP options, there are some very fortunate US counties in WA state that have a) last mile dark fiber network operated by local public utility district which is also the electrical grid operator, and rents access to the fiber to 3rd party ISPs b) local cable tv operator, legacy coax operator, often docsis3 cablemodem c) local ILEC/POTS phone company that may or may not have overbuilt its last mile copper/DSL service with its own singlemode fiber and 1Gbps GPON service. for primarily mobile phone carriers like rogers, there's an effective RF planning limit of around four major LTE/3GPP technology based operators in any given geographical area. USA used to have 4 with sprint until the tmobile/sprint acquisition.
  • ezekiel11 4y ago
    no but i think theres similar zombie giants that is essentially a hybrid state run enterprise but Canada has explicitly designated industries where you simply cannot execute because they are anti-competitive. and its not clear how individuals are being handed out rights to say run a casino in canada. if you took a look at canada's corruption, you will be shocked. we don't quite live in a first world even though we like to tell ourselves all of the government officials/servants are honest. after all the canadian embassy staff in Hong Kong happily handed out PR residency to hardcore organized criminal groups in exchange for various luxuries and perks. when a staff tried to expose it, he was quickly removed and media began to attack him. its not only that but you see NGO's championing for racist white supremacy linked groups who vandalize Chinatown in Vancouver and with a large chunk of locals who feel that they are "being overrun by a certain ethnic group" eat that up and the same populist individuals get elected again and again. then my tax goes towards those interest while none for me because i'm 'privileged' in the long run, I see this system breaking down, if not already. Canada no longer feels like a country but some feudalistic interest group driven, poorly run corportation. so glad i dont have to pay taxes here. the savings and currency difference allowed me to create jobs in another part of the world. there was a time where I hoped things would get better and I could be creating jobs locally. i just regret wasting my youth in canada and west coast. canada is a bubble and lot of us are moving capital/jobs out of it. why contribute to a country that just sees you as an ATM to transfer payments to others who blame everyone but themselves and constantly wanting hand outs? im done with canada and im warning anybody who still attach romantic outlooks, especially in heavily marketed cities like vancouver.
• hackbinary 4y ago
  Just wait until you hear about the UK. BT/Openreach has control of about 80% of the backhaul/trunk connectivity.
  • martinald 4y ago
    Completely not comparable. Openreach has significant marketshare but is also extremely tightly regulated. It has to allow other providers access to basically every element of its offering, now including its physical ducts and poles. Hence you have a very competitive market landscape in the UK. There are at least 5 major national retail players using various wholesale products (BT, VM, TalkTalk, Sky, Vodafone), plus dozens of altnets offering FTTH on totally seperate fibre infrastructure have started (Hyperoptic, Cityfibre, GNetworks, Community Fibre). In my flat in London I have access to 4 seperate FTTH networks (with completely different infrastructure) - Openreach FTTH, VM DOCSIS, Hyperoptic FTTB and Community Fibre FTTH. The market works here, prices are low and there are very few data caps.
    • hackbinary 4y ago
      >> London Yip, things in London are quite different than the rest of the UK. While Openreach has to allow access to other providers to its infrastructure, most infrastructure is owned and controlled by BT. If you want FTTP, the underlying service is still BT Openreach. Openreach is very profitable. At my previous employer it cost us £30K to have BT put in 3000m of fibre that took them 1 afternoon, then it cost £1K a month for a 30Mbs service. BT owns provides the vast majority of broadband service in the UK and it is somewhat disingenuous to claim BT is on an equal footing as Hyperoptic, VM, or Community Fibre. TT and Sky use BT OR infra, and EE, Plusnet, and BT Retail are all owned by the BT Group. The telecom market in the UK is very consolidated and controlled by BT.
      • nsteel 4y ago
        You don't even have to leave London to see a night and day difference. I currently live in a new-build flat and have multiple choices for fibre (Hyperoptic are great). I am hopefully soon to be moving less than a mile down the road into a house where my choice is either an offensively slow BT-backed service or an offensively unreliable (so I have heard) Virgin Media service. If you have a new-build flat in a major UK city you probably have a similar decent choice but the rest of the housing stock (the majority by far) is stuck with BT/Virgin.