Chris S
@rogers.com
|  The many-headed Hydra that is Bell Canada Inc.
The only 2 truly independent ISPs I can find in Ontario who have built their own network all started off as publicly-funded and were founded around the same time Bell came into being, in the early 1900s: BMTS and AM Telecom.
This flies in the face of Bell's logic where they argue that 10 years is more than enough time for a small business to build up its own last-mile network. The considerable resources alone, both financial and logistical, require significant outset of capital and could never be undertaken by young and innovative upstarts meeting a market demand, not in 10 years but perhaps in 20 or 30. A little kick-start in the form of grants or tax relief in order to accommodate this certainly might be warranted.
In my humble opinion, Bell Canada Inc. should've never been allowed to mutate into an Internet Service Provider, Television Network, Newspaper Publisher, Satellite Communications Firm, Cellular Network Provider, and investment holdings company. The spirit of the Railway Act, Bell Canada Act, and Telecommunications Act has become so diluted in the last half of the 20th century, well beyond the original spirit of the law.
The many-headed Hydra we recognize today would've turned the stomachs of Macnault, Anglin, Audette, and Maclean, the Supreme Court justices who paved the way for the expropriations by the Crown for the building Bell's sacred telecom network that it clings to for dear life.
Bell Canada Act, S.C. 1987, c. 19, 5. "The works of the Company are hereby declared to be works for the general advantage of Canada."
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