Bring on higher internet prices...

[mimico_polak]

TEKSAVVY just put themselves up for sale. My understanding is they're literally the only big player to go up against the big 3 (Bell / Telus / Rogers) for internet...so now we have even less competition.

I type this as I wait for my 1 year TEKSAVVY installation at the cottage for $40/month.

TekSavvy puts itself up for sale amid industry turmoil

It has hired bankers and launched a formal sale process, says sources familiar with the discussions

www.theglobeandmail.com

 

[Shaman]

This is happening directly because of ****** anti-competitive Liberal policies. Teksavvy is the *LAST* of the large independents to throw in the towel, because the Liberals have rigged the industry.

In September of 2015 the industry was waiting for a significant price adjustment to wholesale pricing and also to spectrum. We waited 6 years, wrestled with Navdeep Bains over access to fiber (still in no way workable) and finally under Ian Scott, the CRTC rejected the NOW COMPLETELY OUTDATED results of the CRTC's costing studies under the Harper government and decided to "let the market decide." More, he said that he favored "infrastructure-based competition," meaning companies running their own fiber - which is impossible because Bell, Rogers & Telus have 50-140 year old contracts, access to land use at zero cost, tax breaks, grants and the kind of money needed to delay any builds; overbuild or build a market first for any would-be competitor coming into the market. Furthermore, they'll walk students up and down every road with deals that make no financial sense unless all you're trying to do is keep competition out. Venture capital knows this and won't fund any fiber competition.

Letting the market decide also meant ISED doing everything they could to harm the Wireless ISP industry in terms of spectrum (it's ongoing), and no longer properly keeping the data of where 50/10 Mbps goals were met on a geographical basis. They did this right at the start of the funding cycle. Gross incompetence or malice? You choose.

Because Gudie Hutchings and her staff (that's the MP in charge of Internet funding) didn't have that information and completely opposite "letting the market decide," the Liberals then sent $10B into the pockets of the Telcos, who overbuilt anyone providing 50/10 Internet service because ISED wasn't tracking the data as was REQUIRED by the funding, but not available. The same Telcos that HAVE TO REPLACE ALL THEIR COPPER ASSETS ANYWAY because they're all degraded and getting worse. Now they get to do it for free, using your money... oh and the independents are locked out of wholesale for the products their tax dollars are paying for!

So, to quickly recap the Liberals: "&%$# wholesale, &%$# the WISPs, &%$# the Independents, $%#& accountability, we'll let the market decide and by that we mean that we're going to pick the winners and losers using public funding." - Liberal government

Oh, and as a nice side effect, the Liberals will make shifty deals with the big Telcos to surveill the public's communications. The Telcos have no morals beyond their profit margins, unlike those pesky independents that fought for their customers' privacy.

 

[sburns]

This is just bad news. Surprised Teksavvy hasn't alerted customers (like me) which they normally do on such things.

Again our gov sucks, don't care if it's lib or cons, they all seem to do the same thing, which is nothing, and spend our money on their friends companies or get bullied by big corps who rig the system for themselves and monopolize things.

 

[TwistedKestrel]

Noting that so far, Globe and Mail seems to be the only source for this. It's probably true nonetheless

Any hope of a buyer outside of the RoBelLus triopoly?

 

[GreyGhost]

This is just bad news. Surprised Teksavvy hasn't alerted customers (like me) which they normally do on such things.

Again our gov sucks, don't care if it's lib or cons, they all seem to do the same thing, which is nothing, and spend our money on their friends companies or get bullied by big corps who rig the system for themselves and monopolize things.

I am assuming they will send something out when Robellus buys them (who else would want into this market?).

I saw this before and was crushed. The only upside is I have fibre coiled beside my house. I was avoiding hooking it up as I both want nothing to do with Bell and I wanted to continue to support Teksavvy. When they sell to the evil empire, I might as well hook up the fibre and get a faster connection. My money will be going to evil either way.

 

[Baggsy]

This is just bad news. Surprised Teksavvy hasn't alerted customers (like me) which they normally do on such things.

Again our gov sucks, don't care if it's lib or cons, they all seem to do the same thing, which is nothing, and spend our money on their friends companies or get bullied by big corps who rig the system for themselves and monopolize things.

We need to vote out the ones who suck, rather than sitting back and complaining that they're all the same.

 

[Shaman]

Again our gov sucks, don't care if it's lib or cons, they all seem to do the same thing, which is nothing, and spend our money on their friends companies or get bullied by big corps who rig the system for themselves and monopolize things.

In this case, I have to disagree. The Conservatives had an updated, more fair wholesale policy in the works and would literally have implemented it the week after Trudeau was elected in. Naturally, that didn't happen. Now we are where we're at. Liberals are saying that we need competition in the marketplace and the new CRTC head claims they're working towards that but ALREADY have missed two months of deadlines to announce anything. They're being stonewalled and Mirko has already done the "poor me, we won't be able to fund rural Internet if you make us wholesale service" thing, which is utter ******** because as I said they MUST replace all their aged copper assets and fiber is the only workable solution for that. Not to mention that they got just about all the funding they could ever want. Funding that not even SWIFT, EORN and the municipalities got any of in Ontario, which also stinks strongly of corruption and favoritism.

I really have almost nothing good to say about this current Federal government and Ford has reminded me that just because someone runs for the Conservative party doesn't mean they have conservative values.

 

[sburns]

We need to vote out the ones who suck, rather than sitting back and complaining that they're all the same.

I would like to believe in that, I would.

 

[ToSlow]

Iv'e been a Teksavvy customer probably close to 15yr or more. stared out paying 30bucks. Hopefully who ever gobbles them up will honor the contracts already in place

 

[GreyGhost]

Iv'e been a Teksavvy customer probably close to 15yr or more. stared out paying 30bucks. Hopefully who ever gobbles them up will honor the contracts already in place

I'm been with teksavvy since 2010. Currently paying almost $80/mo for 30Mbps. Thats not much different than bell but I am supporting a company I care about.

 

[Baggsy]

I was with Teksavvy until they could no longer match Rogers prices. Since, switched to Bell for the pandemic and WFH. Rogers service here is at best, intermittent. Constant messages on the neighborhood board, asking if Rogers is down again. They are also doing an upgrade, trying to catch up with Fibe. Was looking to switch back to TS when the wife retires.

 

[FullMotoJacket]

I'm been with teksavvy since 2010. Currently paying almost $80/mo for 30Mbps. Thats not much different than bell but I am supporting a company I care about.

That's a deal???

 

[GreyGhost]

That's a deal???

No. Its expensive. I'm willing to pay more as they were fighting the cartel.

 

[TwistedKestrel]

No. Its expensive. I'm willing to pay more as they were fighting the cartel.

Definitely feel that

 

[DownUnder]

Wasn't techsavvy literally just a robellus 3rd party seller? The only independent internet company I've seen lately was CIK. They've been expanding their own fiber network in the neighbourhoods around their head office in Markham.

 

[GreyGhost]

Wasn't techsavvy literally just a robellus 3rd party seller? The only independent internet company I've seen lately was CIK. They've been expanding their own fiber network in the neighbourhoods around their head office in Markham.

Teksavvy has their own ftth in Chatham area. Yes they are a reseller but that's exactly the point. If crtc wasn't such a steaming pile, wholesale rates would have kept retail rates in check. Listening to some of the arguments Robelus presented was infuriating.

 

[Shaman]

Teksavvy has never been a reseller. They purchase network access and pay for the last mile to the home, bringing that customer on to their own network and servicing them using it. Resellers just.... resell.

There are major issues with trying to do FTTH and I'm sure this is why Teksavvy has decided to get out while they can. RoBellUs will overbuild you anywhere they have either funding or a good customer base. They'll very likely out-build you once they find out you're going to service an area and they will find out if there's any municipal conduit, poles, buildings or property use that needs to be coordinated with the incumbent Telco. It's happened to me personally, I was going to build out Consecon and Wellington, Ontario as well as houses along the route from Belleville to them. Before I got a shovel in the ground, Bell went right down the road on their poles using the school fund and Cogeco got $800K from EORN to build down the railroad bed into Wellington just weeks after they had updated the microwave link that they had been using for their cable plant (in other words, no justification other than they knew we were going to build FTTP). So, I switched to selling highspeed Internet over Cogeco using TPIA and dropped the plans. Either way, this is how they @%$& anyone that tries to compete and as I pointed out, they'll use funding that only they can get access to as well as existing conduits, poles, buildings and Crown Land that any competitor will have to go through all the negotiations, permits and coordination to use ... whereas RoBellUs just starts building.

The Liberals rigged the game. 100% on them. I've been fighting them for 8 years and between deep incompetence, DEI hiring and what seems like malice towards smaller companies, they continue to promise things but never deliver. I believe they want it this way so as to make shifty deals for public surveillance and content control. You may feel this is a conspiracy theory but it's one that Peter Menzies (former CRTC head), Paul Blais (another former CRTC head) and Michael Geist share, because I've had face to face talks with all of those and others besides.

 

[timtune]

In this case, I have to disagree. The Conservatives had an updated, more fair wholesale policy in the works and would literally have implemented it the week after Trudeau was elected in.

Whoa I gotta call BS on this one. harper was elected in '06. After being Prime Minister for over 9 years he still needed an extra week to get this done? Sounds like a good story to give the prolitariat while trying not to piss off the big business interests who backs you.
@sburns was right. There's plenty of blame for both the libs and cons.

 

[jc100]

Whoa I gotta call BS on this one. harper was elected in '06. After being Prime Minister for over 9 years he still needed an extra week to get this done? Sounds like a good story to give the prolitariat while trying not to piss off the big business interests who backs you.
@sburns was right. There's plenty of blame for both the libs and cons.

Rogers is a big Con family out of Alberta. Don’t know exactly what Bell and Telus really is but I’ll make a guess that over the years all three have donated to all political parties in one way or another.

They are all anti-competitive highway robbery artists.

 

[Shaman]

Whoa I gotta call BS on this one. harper was elected in '06. After being Prime Minister for over 9 years he still needed an extra week to get this done? Sounds like a good story to give the prolitariat while trying not to piss off the big business interests who backs you.
@sburns was right. There's plenty of blame for both the libs and cons.

Call BS if you want. We were due a ruling from the CRTC and they told us that until the election was over with, they'd have to sit on that ruling, but as it was one the CRTC had developed themselves over several years, it was a done thing. That didn't happen because immediately upon winning the election, Trudeau directed the CRTC and Industry Canada to halt all actions until he had his cabinets and people in place. As it turned out, he more or less WIPED the administration of those two bodies and replaced Industry Canada entirely, with ISED ("Innovation, Science and Economic Development").

They then sat on that ruling for 6 years. Had the CPC won that election, wholesale rates would have changed very significantly in fall of 2015. Instead, they were ruled as "not in the public's interest" by Ian Scott of the CRTC in 2021, when those rates were obsolete and artificially high.

Squirm all you want, this is entirely on the Liberal party. Have you forgotten that Clement intervened directly when Bell got the Liberal-appointed CRTC to follow along with imposing UBB on all of their TPIA clients to protect their BDU revenue stream? This isn't new.