Same. They're not just an ISP. They're strong consumer advocates, bordering on activists. This is terrible.
I've been with Start dot CA for a few years and following their sale to Telus, I've been seriously considering switching to Teksavvy. This is tragic. Are there any good ones left? Our country is about to have literally no options apart from the big three.
I use Coextro. Just some small company operating out of Mississauga. I wouldn't call them amazing, but they try their best. At the end of the day they are really still at the mercy of Bell or Rogers (depending on if you go dsl or cable). They are smaller so they are likely a bit safer for now from being consumed by the duopoly.
Oh shit, not good. They've been the one bright spot in a sea of ISP bleakness.
I've been with them for nearly 10 years now. Stuck with them out of principle even though the speed/price weren't as good as I could get elsewhere.
This seriously sucks, I'm so tired of a small handful of corporations owning every aspect of my life.
There are other independent resellers? I think Teksavvy was the last one, and I was sticking with them to support them, because they have been good for me for 18 years.
Rogers keeps sending people to the door. I keep telling them I have a rule, which is NEVER ROGERS, after my experiences with their customer support.
I used to be on Distributel proper, not as bad customer support as Rogers but it was pretty bad. Currently with Coextro (I know nothing of their corporate structure though) and their customer support has been as good as Teksavvy's in my experience.
I've been with Lightspeed for years. When I did my research, there were lots. The issue will be that Teksavvy was the largest, and took on a bit of a leading role in advocating for cheaper Internet access in Canada.
A lot of the smaller resellers tend to be fairly local as well.
Their pricing was forced on them by the CRTC raising the rates independent ISPs have to pay the big 3 for wholesale services. CRTC must have known this would drive independent ISPs out of business, but they did it anyway. They seem to serve the big corporations, not the people of Canada.
Now we know why. The other resellers were either running at a loss, trying to get subs while looking to get acquired by ROBeLUS, or they were already owned by ROBeLUS and so had dramatically lower costs as a result. These are some strategies for killing a competitor.
TekSavvy is the last remaining large internet wholesale provider, as others have been snapped up by bigger rivals in what independent ISPs describe as a challenging regulatory environment.
Roughly half a dozen independent ISPs have been sold since February of 2022. According to BMO Capital Markets analyst Tim Casey, BCE Inc. paid roughly $139-million for Ebox, an internet, telephone and television service provider based in Longueuil, Que., and approximately $335-million for Ottawa-based Distributel last year.
Telus, meanwhile, acquired Altima Telecom and Start.ca for undisclosed amounts, while Quebecor Inc. snapped up VMedia, an independent internet and television provider serving customers primarily in Toronto, in July of 2022. The price of the VMedia acquisition was also not disclosed.
Montreal-based Cogeco Inc., meanwhile, paid $100-million for Oxio, a Montreal-based provider with 48,000 internet subscribers, Mr. Casey wrote in a research note..
🤦🤦♀️🤦🏼♂️
Sent an email to my MP. This is a competition issue similar to the Shaw sale to Rogers and the feds should get involved. You should do the same.
Now we know how these competitors were able to offer cheaper deals than TekSavvy for the last couple of years. They were all acquired and their costs are now dramatically lower as a result of not having to pay wholesale costs.
The CRTC has been doing a fine job of driving small ISPs out of business and keeping the market closed to all but the biggest established players.
After lowering rates in 2019, which immediately sparked lower internet prices across the country, the CRTC then astonishingly reversed its own decision and raised them back up again in 2021. And 8 years after saying they’d grant wholesale access to state-of-the-art fibre technology, it’s still not available to independent providers. Which means smaller ISPs simply can’t compete against those faster connections of the incumbents.
Why the fuck does the government keep allowing competition to be snapped up by the big 3????
Rhetorical question i guess.... But wtf. Do your job... Where are the antitrust regulations in this country? I am not a lawyer
For context, remember that the Competition Bureau tried to block the Rogers-Shaw merger and was overridden by the courts. So continuing consolidation is a problem that won't be fixed easily.
Canada was literally, actually, no shit created by corporations for the purpose of facilitating the extraction of value from human and natural resources by corporations. It genuinely exists to exploit us.
This is awful. TekSavvy was a strong advocate for positive change in a terrible, entrenched market, and the entire landscape is going to be worse without them. I guess at this point I hope that we see more municipal broadband efforts like in Olds, Alberta, though I fear that I'm never going to see something like that in any major cities.
Here's a non-paywall link: https://archive.is/qfn4r
We were Teksavvy subscribers for 10 years but switched to Bell Fibe last year...all Teksavvy had here was 6 Mbps DSL with a lousy 720 Kbps upload speed. Felt bad because I liked them but needed better internet for today's demands. CRTC screwed them.
It sucks because my community is still stuck on 100Mbps per second as the max over DSL unless we get cable internet. We have been back and forth between both DSL and cable and find we have issues on both regardless of the provider, router, or modem. At this point I feel like the lines to our neighbourhood/house are just so old and flakey and struggle to handle peak internet usage times. It just feels ridiculous though because there is fibre lines at the end of the street as those lines provide fibre access to the new communities.
These companies have no incentive to upgrade/maintain things beyond their initial installations because they control the market. Third party providers can only do so much when things don't work. All they can do is essentially put in a ticket with Bell or Rogers and tell them to fix it. And Bell or Rogers uses their contracted workers to say "yeah looks fine to me" and calls it a day.
I'm getting quite sick of the CRTC not doing anything and not stepping in as much as they should be. I also don't like that I see things like the Bell chairman in private undisclosed meetings with the CRTC. Overall it just seems like corruption runs deep. I guess I'm not really surprised anymore.
CRTC screwed them but they treat their loyal customers EXACTLY like the big three. They fuck us.
Right now new customers can save $400 a year compared to what I was paying for what most consider slow internet (40mbps down and 10 up). There was also an ACT NOW BEFORE ITS TOO LATE offer when I checked, less than two days left to snag a 100mbps plan for the price of a 40mbps one.
Literally no incentive to stay with a provider and be loyal, and all the incentive to hop around or threaten to hop around so that you get these secret special plans that they only pull out as a last resort
Okay, who's in to form a co-op and buy them?
You have my sword. I don't have a lot more than that to offer though. And the sword is just a metaphor.
Canada needs co-ops and Canada needs public access to communication networks. Is there a lawyer in the thread?
Regional co-ops (or regional branches of a national co-op) could provide wireless internet. It's not ideal but if a person is not willing to accept Rogers, Bell or Telus, it could be acceptable.
Totally. But this is very different from buying TekSavvy. TekSavvy serves the vast majority of their customers via ROBeLUS'es last mile infrastructure. They can't do that via regional wireless and so whoever buys them will have to keep paying ROBeLUS. If they can't break even at this point, a new owner such as a co-op will have the same problem. The only owner that won't is ROBeLUS. The only solution to this conundrum is federal intervention via CRTC, Industry Canada or the government itself. My guess we'll hear from Jagmeet first.
Oh god no, I don't think the suggestion is we should form a co-op that buys TekSavvy. I can think of a lot of reasons that's impractical. But I think there is realistically a space for Internet co-ops to be viable for some parts of Canada, if not universally.
Rogere, Bell and Telus
This is a very sad news. I was rooting for them to be the last standing ISP that’s not part of the big tech.
TekSavvy is the last remaining large internet wholesale provider, as others have been snapped up by bigger rivals in what independent ISPs describe as a challenging regulatory environment.
Roughly half a dozen independent ISPs have been sold since February of 2022
From the article
Consolidation can be tumultuous; but I’m just citing the article. They go into much further depth about the situation.
the only turnmoil is the TPIA. When the wholesale rate (regulated by the CRTC) is higher than the retail rate....
But the corruption of our Government[1] is right in our face.
[1] it's corruption, not incompetent. Also it is pan-partisan. Whichever would be at the helm would be paid for by the telecartel.
I've really enjoyed my time with TekSavvy. My wife - then fiance - told me about them when I moved into our new place before her when I was comparing internet prices from the "Big 3". Their front facing disdain for the monopolization and lobbying of telecom in Canada was fascinating to see and made me a big fan, alongside their competitive pricing and good service as well. Although it's only been just over a year I'm really going to miss them if they change everything/are bought out. Hoping for the best here but it is looking grim.
Oh man you missed them in their glory days. They would pressure the big three, prices were lowered, and they gave that back to us customers. They emailed us telling our plans were getting cheaper, faster, or both!
Now they're just the diet coke of the big three. They offer the same crap that all the other ones do - nothing for loyal customers but like over $400 off for newer customers, limited time offers for even faster and cheaper plans...
It's all shit. You hop from service to service, or you tell them you're going to do that and all of a sudden they offer you amazing plans to get you to stay.
Teksavvy will literally throttle your speeds if you're late on your bill, without warning, days before they initially told you they were going to cut you off. This ruined my plans to download a few things before I was stuck offline. This forced me to use up all of my full speed mobile data (another thing that most developed countries don't have and scoff at, data caps). Then you gotta argue with them to NOT have to pay for services that were not provided/withheld.
One would think that the current Liberal CRTC would be better at maintaining competition than the previous Conservative CRTC, and yet here we are. start.ca is now telus, and teksavvy is soon to be.... Rogers? Bell? Viacom?
Fuck it, bring on Starlink!
It's sad when I could likely get faster and more reliable internet connected to a satellite than over cables hooked directly to my house. You'd think living in a more major city in a sprawling suburban residential area would get you reasonably reliable internet, but not even that is the case. Is it too much to ask CRTC to allow some competition?!?!
Ah yeah that really suck.
Municipal network? Look at Toronto. CIty council wanted to create a network to service area where the cartel wouldn't service. The whole thing was vetoed by Rogers Director (member of the board) Mayor John Tory.
Well.... Damn it
It was great. But lately the support is basically on par with anyone else, ie. really bad.
I was with TekSavvy for a long time but they were getting worse. I Switched to Oxio https://oxio.ca which is cheaper and faster than TS was. It’s a brand for Cogeco.
To bypass the paywall and read the article: https://archive.ph/qfn4r
What?? This country is so useless. I've stuck with Teksavvy since I got my first internet account back in 2009. I think I was getting 5/1 over DSL shared in a house of 3. I stuck through all the data usage crap they had to fight against, through the years of deep packet inspection, through the price increases in recent years, and even with knowing that the Liberals and the crtc are both seemingly in favour of never allowing them access to the fiber network.
Wind/Freedom mobile is getting sold yet again, I just experienced cable-cable being sold to Rogers, and now Teksavvy might next. And for what; its not like they're bringing their fancy fiber to my house any time soon. They came by in 2019 letting me know they're making the plans to roll it out on my street. It never happened. All while I get to watch them install fiber in the suburbs.
All of that combined with the extreme toxicity and ignorance on social media, I'm personally prepared to go dark and just use public wifi. All I need is a way to torrent and I'm golden lol.
You can't really put your money where your mouth is if everything is extremely interconnected these days, and there just aren't any options. I'm sick and tired of Canadian oligopolies
Aw darn it. I was just about to switch to them too... Unless they get bought by an idealist buyer, they are just gonna get gobbled up by the big 3...
Still worth switching since they will lick your boots and ignore and fuck over us loyal customers
Get yourself onto one of those competitive contracts before it's too late, chances are prices will go up if this means the last of the independent wholesalers is gone
It's just so nonsensical and corrupt. I'm desperate for uncapped mobile data, you CAN get uncapped LTE connections but only in rural areas and I'm guessing you can't pop the SIM card out of the modem and stick it in your phone
All this wonderful technology, the foundations for a free information utopia, and we're powerless to do anything against the profiteers.
Unless if you know, everybody is willing to boycott together and go offline for days, weeks, months, or God forbid years. Never gonna happen, Canadians are schmucks
To read the article without the paywall: https://web.archive.org/...
@shamrt Trade is orgin of the problem, very simple www.tromsite.com/documentaries…
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I've been with Teksavvy for nearly 15 years. This is a sad, sad day.
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