Speaking personally, I am stunned that the removal or decommissioning of sources was allowed to happen without public consultation. Indeed bell and rogers are just buying up these smaller companies. When I called comwave for example, and chose new services, I was sent to a rogers rep who just gave me the comwave number. start.ca was frankly worse. I have a medically documented need for analog, teksavvy and I are still at the CCTS because I got contracted a phone only for bell Techs to show up and refuse. There is analog infrastructure in my new apartment..more than likely I am going to end up using one of those devises that lets You put a sim card in it, connect an analog phone, and get service. that would be with PC mobile, so I get optimum points..unless my new landlord tells me the line is currently active. What I find bothersome is indeed that what bell and Rogers are doing Internet wise violates cRTC rules with no consumer protection at all it seems. Karen On Mon, 2 Jun 2025, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
Here's what I think I know about broadband providers in Toronto.
Broadband internet comes into houses on cables owned by Rogers or Bell. A very few large buildings are serviced by Beanfield. Rogers old: co-ax cable Bell old: copper pair Rogers and Bell new: optical fibre to the home. Beware: Bell Fibe does not mean fibre.
The CRTC requires the owners of these cables to allow third-party ISPs to sell services to be delivered over these "last mile" facilities. Complicating matters is that a lot of these third parties are actually owned by Bell or Rogers.
Bell is ripping out copper, replacing it with fibre. To a lesser extent, Rogers is ripping out co-ax cable, replacing it with fibre. I have seen indications that they don't build out fibre where the other company has already done so, lowering competition.
Bell and Rogers are resisting allowing resellers access to the fibre cables. As I understand it, this is defying CRTC regulations.
(I'm currently in trouble because my copper connection is being decommissioned. I'm losing my 3rd party ISP even though they provide services that Bell refuses to provide.)
Bell and Rogers each want to provide you a bundle: internet, home phone, TV. On the face of it, these bundles are often good deals. There are regularly very good bundle prices that expire after a year of two.
When you use a third party ISP for internet on that cable, you cannot buy home phone or TV from Bell or Rogers. To make up for this, the ISP may well offer a IP TV streaming TV package and an IP phone package. I don't know how satisfactory those are.
I don't know all the true third party ISPs. I deal with Vybe Networks (upstream: Colosseum) and Teksavvy.
I suspect that Freedom Mobile is a 3rd party ISP. Judging by the speeds they offer my address, they are using Rogers co-ax here. They offer some kind of TV service over their internet service. This doesn't seem to have anything to do with their mobile services.
Telus may or may not offer me service. Their web site teases. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk