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Rogers Canada, please fix the damn internet in Canada

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Re: Rogers Canada, please fix the damn internet in Canada

#71
post #65
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian ISPs definitely have a stronghold on the infrastructure. Can't call it a "monopoly" because there are three of them, but a common name given is "Robelus" which is portmanteau of Rogers/Bell/Telus. I don't have the numbers on how much they spend to lobby the government every year, but I imagine its a staggering sum.

The word you are looking for is “oligopoly”. This is when a small set of firms has a monopoly on something.

That's a good word, but if I were to be honest, I think a better word might be "cartel" ....I looked up oligopoly and it seems like it implies no collusion..... However, when I think about the large telecoms, I feel like they are colluding with (each other, surely, but also) the government.

Re: Rogers Canada, please fix the damn internet in Canada

#72
post #31

I just can't believe how much relies on just one company Rogers seemingly every debit machine in Canada, anything to do with passports, many doctor's offices. A similar situation occurred just last April (2021). https://mobilesyrup.com/2021/04/20/nationwide-rogers-outage-...

Canadian ISPs definitely have a stronghold on the infrastructure. Can't call it a "monopoly" because there are three of them, but a common name given is "Robelus" which is portmanteau of Rogers/Bell/Telus. I don't have the numbers on how much they spend to lobby the government every year, but I imagine its a staggering sum.

A 'Canada' should be another word for an oligopolistic (maybe that's a word?) state.

Mobile carriers - 4 control 98+ % of the market

Internet - 4 control likely 90+ % of the internet market

Banks - 5 control 90+ % of retail banking. The rest? Credit Unions who have themselves mostly merged into https://www.central1.com/

Insurance - 6 control 89%

Media - 4 control 70%

Grocer - 5 control 60%

Movie theaters - 2 control 99%

Links:

[0] https://financialpost.com/fp-finance/megadeals-fuelling-unpr...

[1] https://financialpost.com/investing/how-canadas-oligopolies-...

Re: Rogers Canada, please fix the damn internet in Canada

#73
post #65
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian ISPs definitely have a stronghold on the infrastructure. Can't call it a "monopoly" because there are three of them, but a common name given is "Robelus" which is portmanteau of Rogers/Bell/Telus. I don't have the numbers on how much they spend to lobby the government every year, but I imagine its a staggering sum.

The word you are looking for is “oligopoly”. This is when a small set of firms has a monopoly on something.

Investopedia were pretty sure they were:

https://web.archive.org/web/20171230012928/https://www.inves...

Re: Rogers Canada, please fix the damn internet in Canada

#74
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't worry, as with Shaw and Rogers, Audet family controls the votes through supervoting shares. This isn't a democracy. Rogers only has 13% control of Cogeco itself: https://crtc.gc.ca/ownership/eng/cht043.pdf

I want more info, please email me. I put address in my HN proflie

What more info do you want?

Re: Rogers Canada, please fix the damn internet in Canada

#75
post #31

I just can't believe how much relies on just one company Rogers seemingly every debit machine in Canada, anything to do with passports, many doctor's offices. A similar situation occurred just last April (2021). https://mobilesyrup.com/2021/04/20/nationwide-rogers-outage-...

Canadian ISPs definitely have a stronghold on the infrastructure. Can't call it a "monopoly" because there are three of them, but a common name given is "Robelus" which is portmanteau of Rogers/Bell/Telus. I don't have the numbers on how much they spend to lobby the government every year, but I imagine its a staggering sum.

[deleted]

Re: Rogers Canada, please fix the damn internet in Canada

#76
post #50
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada is a country of oligopolies - everywhere from the products you can buy to the Federal Liberal Party's Trudeau Foundation being the receiving end for paid political favours. It is hard to think of areas where there is actual competition in Canada, because there are so few. Media? None, the Federal Liberals fund the approved media and leave the unapproved to fend for itself or die. The approved media is then hig…

The media is not at the whim of the Trudeau govt. There’s the National Post and Rebel media. CBC itself has been highly critical of the govt if you care to watch it. Then there’s CTV and Global News. And I recall a number of newspapers and radio stations are owned by conservative interests.

They don’t like to bring it up, but they all owe a lot of their existence to government regulation (can content requirements), media production funds ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Media_Fund ), other grants and tax credits: https://www.canadaland.com/qcjo-news-media-bailout-explainer...

Re: Rogers Canada, please fix the damn internet in Canada

#77
Few notes, ad an EU mind: why a private company should fix? Who own roads? The public isn't it? Then they one of the most used road by the public, named internet, is not run equally by the public whose target is not profit but offering a service to the public?

Aside: do we really want to make a cash-less society? No ones who of course have e-cash BUT ALSO physical money payable in person no extra network needed?

Do we really want connected stuff, cars included (see last "blackout" of SF autonomous taxi fleet in the USA) instead of having optional connectivity under user control and a local-first approach by default?

Re: Rogers Canada, please fix the damn internet in Canada

#78

India High Speed Internet 4G - 2GB per day - Rs. 450 per month ($ 6.50) + plus unlimited nation-wide calling.Everything in Canada is an oligopoly.

What speeds do you get in India for those prices.

On 4G have seen 5Mbps consistently, and reaches 25Mbps if you are closer to the cell tower.This 4G connection was my backup for remote working over a VPN. Primary was a 50Mbps symmetric fibre to my home, which costed about $10 per month, unlimited with peering for youtube, netflix, amazon, disney and other streaming platforms. Fun fact, I don't have a municipal supply of water at my place, but oddly enough get Fibre to home easily.

Re: Rogers Canada, please fix the damn internet in Canada

#79
post #33

The problem is bundling and integration. The customer is best served by dumb-pipe vendors. Imagine if your devices conducted a reverse auction periodically, and could switch providers without significant cost. My phone service is Rogers and my internet is Cogeco, so this outage isn't a huge problem for me. If it were the other way around, I could route through my phone, but it would be a serious impairment. If that h…

>My phone service is Rogers and my internet is Cogeco, so this outage isn't a huge problem for me. If it were the other way around, I could route through my phone, but it would be a serious impairment. If that happened a lot, I could buy a dedicated adapter but it would cost another "line" of service. Which is a monthly fee, regardless of use. It's not practical for most people to pay redundant contracts - but there'…

Canadian mobile is so expensive that it actually isn't a huge markup if you only use mobile data lightly.

I am curtusing a Bell "tablet" pay as you go plan and IIRC if I use under a GiB a month an internal roaming SIM would be cheaper. Plus it was measured by MiB instead of huge jumps like 1/2GiB, 1GiB, 2GiB, 5GiB, 10GiB. For these days where I am still almost always at home with WiFi I would have saved a decent bit of money.

The main reason I didn't take this option is because almost all of the providers tunnel their traffic yo some other country where their headquarters are. So the performance isn't necessary great. And even if they don't you usually get a foreign IP which results in blocks and wrong languages for many sites.

Re: Rogers Canada, please fix the damn internet in Canada

#80
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian ISPs definitely have a stronghold on the infrastructure. Can't call it a "monopoly" because there are three of them, but a common name given is "Robelus" which is portmanteau of Rogers/Bell/Telus. I don't have the numbers on how much they spend to lobby the government every year, but I imagine its a staggering sum.

A 'Canada' should be another word for an oligopolistic (maybe that's a word?) state. Mobile carriers - 4 control 98+ % of the market Internet - 4 control likely 90+ % of the internet market Banks - 5 control 90+ % of retail banking. The rest? Credit Unions who have themselves mostly merged into https://www.central1.com/ Insurance - 6 control 89% Media - 4 control 70% Grocer - 5 control 60% Movie theaters - 2 control…

What percentage of mobile phones in the us are not Apple or Samsung? How much wailing and gnashing of teeth would occur if Apple screws up an iOS upgrade that can’t easily be undone? Or just repeats what rogers and Facebook have done re dns?

Glass houses, eh?

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