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Comment by RandyRanderson | Hacker News Reader

Let's not get too excited here:

1 The CRTC (our version of the US FCC) chairman said (in the linked article): "The commission's approach to affordability has always been through market forces". Market forces like competition?

2 Three companies control ~90+ % of the Canadian internet market (Rogers, Bell and Telus).

3 Canada has the highest mobile ARPU numbers in the world because of the 'market forces' here [1].

4 It's well known in Canada that the Liberal Party (recently federally elected) is very 'cozy' (not my word) with the big 3 telcos[0].

Merry xmas, Canada's telco oligopoly. Don't spend that 750million all in one place!!! Yours always, PM Trudeau

[0] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/03/24/liberal-party-cozy-r... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203642/forecast-for-the-...

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I moved to Toronto from the EU a while back and can confirm that the ISPs and mobile carriers are all awful.

Horrific service, decades old technology (I'm still on 3G in Toronto), traffic quotas (low ones at that) and all options are rather expensive.

I had a quick look around, and in .SE you get about 40GB of mobile traffic for 90CAD. The same amount of money will get you 10GB of traffic at Bell in Canada.

The story is identical for residential broadband. It is truly an embarrassment.

There are plenty of third party ISPs that offer plans without data caps.

I've used Start.ca for a few years now and I've been very happy with the service.

Mobile is indeed quite awful, though.

The challenge a lot of people face, particularly in the downtown of cities, is that Bell, Telus and Rogers are locking up entire condo buildings with "exclusive provider" access by wiring the building at construction..

So if you move in, you have to sign up with whoever signed that deal. And it's not like you get a discount or some kind of special service, you just lose the choice.

I found this out the hard way when I moved into my current place last fall. I was with Teksavvy (a relatively good 3rd party independent ISP) and when I called to schedule my move, they told me they couldn't service me in my new building, and I was forced to sign up with Rogers (who provide good service, but it's more expensive).

Now I know this is a thing (and I found out it's quite common), so I'll be more careful next time, but I bet a lot of people don't know (or care), so this is yet another way that the big telcos are doing everything they can to undermine customer choice in Canada.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll definitely watch for this next time I move.

They do the same stunt in the US. Most apartment complexes can only get Comcast or AT&T (typically not both, or only DSL at highly reduced speeds (768kbps vs 100-200mbit for cable).

This is my situation with Comcast in Boston.

> locking up entire condo buildings with "exclusive provider" access by wiring the building at construction..

These days, that sort of thing has got to affect sale/resale value to a small, but still noticeable extent. If it doesn't, it should. That should help to discourage those arrangements in the long run.

My previous apartment building (condos, although I rented) in downtown San Francisco had such a wiring deal with AT&T U-verse from its 2008 construction up until around a year ago. Apparently enough of the condo owners got fed up and got the homeowner association to rewire everything and bring in a new ISP (the mostly excellent Webpass).

Still on 3G in Toronto?? Weird considering almost every carrier has Southern Ontario blanketed with LTE..

Not Wind. Or rather Freedom as they're now called.

They just launched LTE. But mostly in Hamilton and only on the utterly useless frequency band 62, which is not supported be any mainstream phone.

As a life-long Canadian, Toronto has always been a bit regressive. As a current resident of rural Ontario, LTE is widely available and even the local farms have residential (uncapped!) fibre. Granted, I don't think there is much improvement on the cost.

I don't think this is a new story either. I remember as a child in the mid-90s, the rural public schools had high speed (for the time, at least) internet connections even back then. I have recollections of the same time period that Toronto schools were still trying to figure out how to get online at all, and were experimenting with dialup.

You even see this manifest in other areas. Like, it was only a year ago that it was big news that Toronto was soon going to be able to buy beer in grocery stores, which I found a bit funny. Rural Ontario has been able to buy a wide range of alcohol products in grocery stores since the 1960s.

>Horrific service, decades old technology (I'm still on 3G in Toronto), traffic quotas (low ones at that) and all options are rather expensive.

I agree that the service it horrific and expensive compared to Europe. But why are you still on 3G when every major carrier offers LTE in Toronto? The technology isn't decades old -- in most public places LTE is just a bit slower than wifi.

Wind (Freedom Mobile) started offering LTE very recently.

That too, on just 2 phones that you HAVE to purchase from them and on newer sim cards that you have to pay for (over the monthly $40/6 GB cost).

They did, but on band 62 which is not supported by any mainstream phone.

AWS-3 is B66, NOT 62. They also still have 'legacy' AWS-1 which MANY "mainstream" devices support.

I live in small-town BC and get 150/150 for $85 a month with no caps. Surely you, in the Centre of the Universe[0], can do better than what you have now.

[0] How non-Torontonians sarcastically refer to Toronto

150/50 via Bell is ~ $100/mth in TO

I live in the GTA area, and pay ~$40 for just 12/1 (on Acanac).

I honestly can't wait for gigabit fiber to expand to outskirts like Ajax and Oshawa.

My Dad lives in a tiny town about 90 minutes outside of Toronto. They have a municipal telephone company owned by the town residents and his internet service is very good. They started doing FTTH years ago.

What's worse is how many Canadians seem to defend these awful companies and the lack of competition.

I live in Mississauga and commute every day to downtown Toronto and I am always on LTE. Which carrier are you using? Wind?

Customers of a larger provider had their rates go up. While those of a smaller reseller went down. http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crtc-teksavvy-1.3906730

We've seen how well other basic services have been handled and priced. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/07/21/ontario-hydro-rates_...

Tip for Vancouver people:

Urban Fibre gives home gigabit ethernet service for less than I was paying Shaw for 3Mb/s via cable. So nice to not feel ripped off.

I'm not affiliated with them.

Now if only my cell data wasn't so crazy expensive...

I have Urban Fibre, but are they available everywhere? They're up on Burnaby Mountain, but where else? I was under the impression that they were formed to sell access to a fibre link to downtown from a defunct government project?

Re 2: I know they dominate the cell phone market, but that can't be accurate. Shaw, Eastlink and Videotron have massive marketshare in their respective regions.

Shaws "region" is everywhere west of Hamilton (Toronto). Eastern Canada is Rogers (cable) and Bell (adsl) and Western Canada is Shaw (cable) and Telus (adsl)

Right, Shaw, Telus, SaskTel, MTS (soon to be Bell), and TBayTel are the players west of Sault St Marie. Cogeco, Rogers, Bell, and Videotron get the majority of Ontario and Quebec. Eastlink, Rogers, and Bell Aliant get the Atlantic provinces. My point more generally is that while Telus, Bell and Rogers (rightly) get a lot of grief for their actions in the cellular market, home ISPs are a different thing. Because Bell and Rogers dominate the golden horseshoe, they get most of the media coverage, but we shouldn't forget the influence the other players have.

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