said by justsomeguy :

When was I begging for stuff? I was curious about something in that thread. I got the answer I was looking for.

quote:

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There is one of their services where they are different and that is in the provision of physical wiring to our homes. This is a service where Bell was given privileged “right of way” access by various levels of government to place cabling (copper, fiber, etc) below and above public and private land. Bell could never offer this service without government intervention, and the superior property right is the public and private property that the cables run below and above — not the cabling.

Bell was given a number of requirements in exchange for this privileged government intervention. Historically the most often discussed was rural access, where Bell was mandated to offer phone services to rural locations — even at what might otherwise have been a loss, except for the fact that they were given practically guaranteed profits in other markets by the government, as well as massive government subsidies over the years. More recently the condition discusses more often is competitive access to the facilities which the public sector made possible (through right of way and subsidies) to allow services built upon this last mile to be provided by a competitive private sector.

I will state what seems to be the core of the confusion: when it comes to this last mile wiring below and above our property, the service that Bell Canada manages can no more be considered privately “owned” by Bell than Canada Post can be considered private. While the ideal would have been if this specific service had been separated by Bell Canada and operated as a proper crown corporation, we can’t go back in time and fix this problem

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