Hacker News Reader

Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

I guess you're talking to me. I'm not arguing for screen scraping. I'm stating my experience as a Canadian that our oligopolies use legislation like this as a way to discourage competition, under the guise of helping users. And they rely on people like you to talk about how great it is that we're all getting a made in Canada open banking solution when what we'll really get is something that makes new entry impossible and locks users in to the big 5 banks. Look at our vibrant telecommunications sector for a similar example.

Edit: I see this is a losing battle, the comments responding to the parent seem to imply that he is championing open banking against a group that disagree with it. And the replies to me think that I don't want open banking. Enjoy your discussion

View on HN

As another canadian, here's something that occurred to me recently: we like to sling around the oligopoly argument when talking about telecoms, but when I bothered to look a bit into it, rather than finding some tightly knit mafia-like boys club, what I found is that the landscape is quite fragmented and messy (e.g. look at the scope of Telus' operations in Ontario vs Quebec, or look at how Sasktel operates, or look at companies like Fibrestream)

The big telecom lobbying argument vs CRTC about how urban markets need to subsidize rural infrastructure costs is not something 95% of canadians like to hear, but it kinda makes sense (They say rural infra simply isn't cost effective because Canada is so expansive, but you expect high speed Internet access in your Muskoka cottage, right?)

Banking is kind of in a similar boat in the sense that it's an industry with economies of scale effect, so naturally there are going to be big players. Even smaller players like Tangerine need to make "big boy" investments like call centers. ICBC is another example of a bank that isn't the big 5 and yet has brick and mortar branches to serve a highly specific niche.

OpenBanking doesn't mean that TD et al somehow get to tighten the noose on smaller banks to their own advantage; it's actually on them to implement the APIs. If Tangerine can't keep up with other banks improving their technology, that's their own fault. What the whole thing means is that Plaid doesn't get to have root access to your banking.

> The big telecom lobbying argument vs CRTC about how urban markets need to subsidize rural infrastructure costs is not something 95% of canadians like to hear, but it kinda makes sense

For some groups (especially reservations where their location to practice independent governance is government mandated) I can absolutely sympathize - but for most of the rest of rural Canada - uh why? Urban centers like Toronto and Vancouver are already paying property taxes far exceeding rural areas - with the residents paying those taxes also being hit by bigger income tax proportions due to the higher wages in the cities.

There is no allowance for rural Canadians to get subsidized access to live operas and plays - choosing to live in a rural area comes with a general acceptance that those sorts of live performances are always going to be inconvenient and expensive since you'll need to travel to the city to get them. Why are we treating internet significantly different? If you choose to live in the middle of nowhere you can pay the actual cost for a company to maintain a line to your cabin in the woods while enjoying the scenery you're immersed in.

On Monday I've got a hookup guy coming to my place to switch our condo over from Telus to Novus - this will drop our price from 100G/$80 to 300G/$50 along with removing data limits and throttling and probably actually getting closer to the advertised rate (we often get about 15-20 down from Telus right now - I've heard much better things about Novus).

Part of the reason Novus can do this is indeed the fact that it doesn't offer service outside of very dense urban areas - and I'm personally quite okay with that.

> If you choose to live in the middle of nowhere you can pay the actual cost for a company to maintain a line to your cabin in the woods while enjoying the scenery you're immersed in.

When competitors are stopped at the border for dubious pretexts it means that the local monopolies can effectively decide not to wire your property.

Wouldn't it be nice to see an ultra-competitive European carrier laying fiber out there?

Because if we didn't since the 90s, the socioeconomics of Canada would have gotten insanely out of whack? Think of it in terms of access to education and information. As someone from the sticks, I can even grok how it would have played out, it would have been a nightmare. The kids from the pulp and paper towns (that I will remind you, very much helped build the Canada you live in today, the woods are nice sure, but the towns are there because of economics Canada is built on, not just because people want nice scenery) would have been drastically disadvantaged comparatively. I understand this is somewhat less true today, but I still think serving the rural infrastructure is disproportionately expensive, and I don't think we should start asking Canadians to move.

I think Novus, Fibrestream and friends are good examples that support the idea that the market is healthy and oligopolies don't have the ability to use their position to choke out smaller players.

I'd wager that Canada is still largely a wild west when it comes to physical copper coverage. Meaning big players do project long term profit from rural markets and actively invest in them, but that the projections aren't sustainable below some price threshold, hence butting heads with CRTC to make the math work out.

As for the notion that country bumpkins ought to be satisfied with inconvenience, I'm not sure how to respond other than more and more they expect modern things to be available to them. A customer is never in their right mind going to shoulder a 100k upfront cost to lay fiber to a town, so if someone wants to make the cost benefit analysis, it's most likely going to be one of the big players, IMHO

Are you really comparing live operas and plays to Internet access? One is a luxury. The other is a necessary utility (that also facilitates other luxuries, but that's beside the point, because there's a lot of things you need the utility for).

> The big telecom lobbying argument vs CRTC about how urban markets need to subsidize rural infrastructure costs is not something 95% of canadians like to hear, but it kinda makes sense (They say rural infra simply isn't cost effective because Canada is so expansive, but you expect high speed Internet access in your Muskoka cottage, right?)

That still doesn't explain why internet service is way more expensive in Canada than pretty much everywhere else in the world.

I don't mean this to be crass, I presume you've never driven across Canada then? I suspect if you had, you'd very soon realize why it's so expensive. 11 people per square mile, the same as Botswana, except at least in Botswana you can just drive in a straight line for hours, and you don't have snow salt and freezing temperatures to contend with. If a team from Rogers in Toronto had to go to Kenora Ontario to service equipment, they'd have to fly to Thunder Bay, and then drive 12 hours, and then get a hotel, ship gear, etc etc, never mind the winters, and the fact that the skill labour in the telco industry only became marginally more abundant in the last 10/15 years.

Except what matters is the density distribution. 85% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border, for instance.

https://www.vox.com/2016/5/5/11584064/canada-population-map

Take the population distribution map and throw it on top of the telecommunications coverage map and put it on a 20 year timeline, I suspect you'll have the answer to your question, as I explained, Kenora is not near Toronto, it's many many many many many many many hours of driving away, places that are literally physically difficult to get to.

Kenora is a two hours drive from Winnipeg, it's not nearly as inaccessible as you're making it out to be.

However, with that said, I saw numbers saying that laying one mile of fiber costs to the tune of $30k, so just connecting Winnipeg to Kenora would cost some $4M. Kenora itself has an area of 80 sq mi and a population of 15k people (though mostly concentrated near Lake of Woods). It's not nothing, but also not exactly a gold mine for telecoms, to be sure.

Timmins might be a better example. It's more than 400 miles north of Toronto, and has some 40k people. Sudbury is half way there and has some 160k people, but still some 250 miles away from Toronto. To give a sense of scale, the distance from Timmins to Toronto is bigger than the distance from Amsterdam (Netherlands) to Berlin (Germany). 200k potential customers is a pretty decent size market (that's a quarter of San Francisco's population, for example), but covering 400 miles w/ fiber at $30k/mile just to reach it comes out to a cool $12M upfront investment. Don't forget this is just to connect two points, there's still last mile coverage and ongoing maintenance which is going to add quite a bit of cost on top. If a single competitor is there, that can cut into the profits pretty deeply.

That's the sort of math that telecoms need to deal with when doing ROI analyses on these markets.

I feel like the rural coverage issue is misleading and overused. Look at their coverage maps:

https://www.rogers.com/mobility/network-coverage-map?icid=R_...

Most of my province (BC) is not covered. They cover the urban areas and some wider areas along highways in plateau regions. Where is this burdensome coverage that is keeping them expensive?

It's not your province that's the problem, it's Ontario, Manitoba, and Quebec mostly keeping your internet and phone expensive. I don't think people in those provinces are oblivious to that either, and I'm sure they thank you for being a good Canadian, we are after all a country, not say, a collection of states that are "united".

I'm curious what you think you would get from a deregulated banking sector and a deregulated telecom sector? As far as I see it, people in Thunder Bay, Swan River, Bas-Saint-Laurent, or, etc etc wouldn't have had cell service for a long time, maybe even still today, and we might have cheaper cell plans and more data and faster speeds in Toronto and Vancouver. Canadian economy would be in a considerably weaker position with more Canadians in poor financial situations, but we had a wider range of products and services? I can only see deregulation of those sectors being self serving, I don't think it helps all Canadians at large, and I think that's what being a Canadian is all aboot.

Thunder Bay have its very own mobile carrier, which is quite a feat for a town of 100k people.

https://www.tbaytel.net

I was born in Thunder Bay. :) Maybe Fort Frances would have been a better example, basically the cell and internet in Fort Frances was non-existent/didn't work 90% of the time till the province forced Tbay Tel & Shaw to service the region correctly, and we paid the same prices as folks in Tbay, and I'm sure it made little to no economic sense to be servicing that far up north at that time, but I'm sure glad they did.

So to recap, Canada without open banking: 5 big banks, impossible to compete.

Canada with open banking: 5 big banks, impossible to compete.

I believe he’s saying that adding this flavor of open banking regulation, on top of the others, further entrenches the incumbents, meaning the situation is not identical as future unwinding of these defenses will have more work to do. In addition, the “open banking” would be implemented in a less than ideal way from the perspective of consumers and squander an opportunity to meaningfully improve retail banking and third party retail financial tools. So the situation would not be as patly identical as you present it.

I find it hard to believe that the current situation could get any worse for consumers.

I don't think anyone is arguing that regulation can't and has never been used to stifle competition. It's fine to be skeptical but that can't be a reason to keep the status quo.

What would a solution look like for you? Would it be that screen-scraping be banned and open banking APIs be encouraged but not mandated? Or mandated within X years for existing banks or within X years of establishing a new bank? Something else?

Wouldn't this more or less be a protocol for any bank to implement? How would this lock people in to anything?

Not a loosing battle; let's keep the discussion; but honestly I see situations where a oligopoly is preferred.

I lived in states. I banked in First bank of Fairmont ... yes, a city of 11,500 people had its own bank. I could not do ANYthing outside of city. This was a while back of course, but even today that the notion that there are over 5000 banks in USA (down from way over 10k), with complicated inter-state financing laws, from everything I can hear and understand from my USA friends and family, is discouraging both competition and functionality/convenience/sanity, and seems like we are constantly 5-10 years ahead in Canada with basics like Interac, PIN, Chip, Contactless, Interac email transfer, etc. Basically, USA banking system is as strange to me as their health / insurance system.

A bit like, I enjoyed it when Netflix was a monopoly and I could get anything I wanted there. I don't like the "competition" we have now with myriad streaming services that don't interoperate and have different systems and oh yes all want my money.

I guess I am curious: what should I be on the lookout, as a Canadian, that I am missing in our banking system compared to USA? What should I be hopeful a new entry would give me?

(and note, I am talking about banking sector for myself as ignorant consumer; telecom is a whole other ballgame for a myriad different reasons and I'll 100% agree is an area where we are lagging).

> Edit: I see this is a losing battle, the comments responding to the parent seem to imply that he is championing open banking against a group that disagree with it. And the replies to me think that I don't want open banking. Enjoy your discussion

It would help if you specified a problem with the proposal or with the Advisory Committee on Open Banking in particular. If you can't, then a guess of "Canada's banks are upset about competition" is a really exaggerated immediate post.

That's not happening in the UK, I don't think it's that difficult to conform to - especially not compared to the financial compliance stuff you're already dealing with as a bank! At the end of the day it's just 'use this API instead of rolling your own', really.

The reason I've soured on it is that it's not that bloody open at all. It should be called 'InteroperableBanking' or something.

The process you are describing is ["regulatory capture"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture) It isn't Canada specific. It is the rule for everyone, for all people, and for all times. The people with the most incentive to corrupt a corporate governing body are the corporations that are being governed themselves. No one else cares as much as they do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com