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The Canadian telecom space is dominated by 3 primary companies -- Telus, Bell, and Rogers. They form an effective oligopoly that is quite detrimental to the Can

by tvhahn 4y ago

The Canadian telecom space is dominated by 3 primary companies -- Telus, Bell, and Rogers. They form an effective oligopoly that is quite detrimental to the Canadian consumer. In the ISP space, there is a bit more competition. Namely, Shaw provides additional coverage in some regions of the country. However, Rogers wants to buy Shaw. You can imagine how bad that will be for Canadians. I do wonder what the Rogers outage is about. Ransomeware? State attack? Something stupid? If anything, it shows how we should not have critical infrastructure centralized. Competition between ISPs is important.

walrus01 4y ago
In the ISP world, what will happen with Rogers buying Shaw... In the western provinces, AB and BC, Rogers runs a very widespread and strong LTE network. What they do not have is a DOCSIS3/coax and GPON cable TV plant. Nor do they have much terrestrial right of way for aerial plant or underground in conduits, which is where Telus (the historical copper POTS ILEC) and Shaw (the historical cable TV operator going back to the mid 1970s) are by far the strongest. Rogers is a facilities based last mile cable operator/terrestrial operator in Ontario. Shaw runs the landline cable tv networks in most of the metro Vancouver area. And many other small to mid sized cities in the west. Letting Rogers control both one of the largest/strongest mobile phone networks and the only viable land line terrestrial broadband competitor to Telus by acquiring Shaw's cable tv plant is an absolute outrage. To use a USA analogy, it's like if T-Mobile already owned RCN (Astound) in some big part of the country and then proceeded to buy Comcast. Or if Verizon bought Spectrum (Charter/historical TWTC cable).
ju45 4y ago
There's also Vidéotron and Cogeco but these are not Canada wide so .. yea.
jonny_eh 4y ago
> Something stupid? Whatever it is… it's definitely something stupid.

by tvhahn 4y ago

walrus01 4y ago

In the ISP world, what will happen with Rogers buying Shaw... In the western provinces, AB and BC, Rogers runs a very widespread and strong LTE network. What they do not have is a DOCSIS3/coax and GPON cable TV plant. Nor do they have much terrestrial right of way for aerial plant or underground in conduits, which is where Telus (the historical copper POTS ILEC) and Shaw (the historical cable TV operator going back to the mid 1970s) are by far the strongest. Rogers is a facilities based last mile cable operator/terrestrial operator in Ontario. Shaw runs the landline cable tv networks in most of the metro Vancouver area. And many other small to mid sized cities in the west. Letting Rogers control both one of the largest/strongest mobile phone networks and the only viable land line terrestrial broadband competitor to Telus by acquiring Shaw's cable tv plant is an absolute outrage. To use a USA analogy, it's like if T-Mobile already owned RCN (Astound) in some big part of the country and then proceeded to buy Comcast. Or if Verizon bought Spectrum (Charter/historical TWTC cable).

ju45 4y ago

There's also Vidéotron and Cogeco but these are not Canada wide so .. yea.

jonny_eh 4y ago

> Something stupid? Whatever it is… it's definitely something stupid.