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Comment by mrcharles | Hacker News Reader

Canada can never have anything like this, since the CRTC has proven that they will defend Bell's write to keep a stranglehold on last mile connections to consumer homes. Even if a startup did want to provide the ridiculously high speeds, the 'cost' of convincing Bell to let you compete on their copper will be prohibitive.

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Jeff Atwood wrote about how the internet has overthrown the major telephone companies, specifically naming Bell: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/02/the-importance-of-n... I think it's funny (ie., sad) that Bell is pretty much completely in control in Canada. The federal government overruled the CRTC, but the CRTC has set a very poor precedent.

Counter-datapoint:

I'm in Canada (Toronto) and have fiber to the home, and have had it since about 2002. If you see more of this sort of thing in Canada, I suspect it will likely be brand new neighborhoods in metro areas, large scale condo projects, etc.

[EDIT: speed test: http://www.speedtest.net/result/1145884475.png ]

Do you pay $13 a month for it? I'm going to assume no.

Still only 8mbps up. That's another big problem, people want to backup their data and access their media from outside their home. Upstream bandwidth is a big factor in this as well.

I'm in the GTA paying $100/m for this: http://www.speedtest.net/result/1159870352.png

I work from home, it's the only reason I tolerate my wallet getting raped every month; that and I don't pay for TV.

Companies can always build their own "last mile connection". I have a fiber optic connection here in Vancouver (20/20mbps), it cost $45/mo, which is reasonable.

The thing is that the ISP (Novus) had to lay cables to all the suites in the tower. This cost money, and might only viable in high density areas.

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