I don't know for you, but here in Canada companies like Bell, Telus, Cogeco and Videotron have very, very expensive services.
I don't know a whole lot about the big telcos, but I use a small customer-owned telco in Canada and while the prices are basically the same as the big players, the profits aren't extraordinary. In fact, just as the parent suggests, in their case, internet service is operated at a loss and is subsidized by the other services the telco provides.
Perhaps the bigger operations can run their networks for less due to their larger scale and only gouge us because they can, or maybe it is just really expensive to operate telecommunication networks in Canada?
The thing is, in Canada all small Telcos are using the networks of the big Telcos. In Quebec City for instance, there are only two internet providers: Videotron and Bell for cable and phone line internet respectively, all the small players are just resellers for their network.
Of course their profit margins are small: the big Telcos still gets most of it. Their support, however, is often incredibly better than what any big Telco could ever hope to achieve.
That is certainly true in some places, but the telco I speak of owns the last mile copper and are working on rolling out their own fibre to the customers. There are more telcos in Canada than you might think. Ontario alone has around 20 telephone companies that are not the big players and are not just resellers of the big players infrastructure.
I don't know a whole lot about the big telcos, but I use a small customer-owned telco in Canada and while the prices are basically the same as the big players, the profits aren't extraordinary. In fact, just as the parent suggests, in their case, internet service is operated at a loss and is subsidized by the other services the telco provides.
Perhaps the bigger operations can run their networks for less due to their larger scale and only gouge us because they can, or maybe it is just really expensive to operate telecommunication networks in Canada?