Canadian Radio-television & Telecommunications Commission helps sustain competition in broadband market The CRTC’s services framework sets out the terms & conditions and rates whereby telecommunications providers are required to partition a percentage of their networks over to their competitors. “As Canadians participate more actively in the digital economy, they will need access to higher Internet speeds to power their broadband homes and businesses. By continuing to mandate certain wholesale services, and including access to fibre facilities, we are continuing our work to drive competition so Canadians have access to more choice, innovative services and reasonable prices. At the same time, we fully expect that companies will continue to invest in their networks, including in fibre technology, to meet the growing needs of consumers.” - Jean-Pierre Blais, CRTC Chairman On July 22nd, the CRTC announced measures to facilitate competition between companies that offer broadband Internet. These measures are intended to provide Canadians with more choices, foster innovation, and provide services at reasonable prices. After conducting an extensive review, the CRTC found that large broadband companies continue to possess leveraged market dominance and anti-competition provisions of high-speed access services and the CRTC is requiring that they make wholesale access to these services available to competitors. * The CRTC will continue to take action to ensure that Canadians have more choices for high-speed Internet services. * The CRTC will continue to mandate access to wholesale services, including high-speed access services, to encourage competition in the broadband Internet market. * Additionally, the CRTC is requiring that competitors have access to wholesale high-speed services of the large established companies that use optical fibre facilities. * The CRTC is encouraging further investment in high-quality networks. read_more The big telecommunications companies of Canada will be required to open up their highest-speed fibre lines to smaller competitors who want to offer broadband services to consumers. The smaller competitor companies currently own only about 10% of the Canadian home internet market, with the other 90% controlled by the big phone and cable companies. Telecom and cable providers are already required to share their copper and coaxial cables with smaller competitors such as TekSavvy, Distributel, and Primus, and will also...
