MaynardKrebs
Premium
join:2009-06-17
| reply to R0CKY
Re: Do Bell and Rogers have too much control on Canada?
We have 6 major banks (Schedule A) servicing most decent sized communities in the country.
We have a plethora of bricks and mortar Schedule B banks in some of the major centres.
We have a number of virtual banks (ING, Manulife) serving the whole country.
And we have some of which are run using facilities of one of the Schedule A banks but which maintain their own lending and account policies (PC Financial).
In most communities we have two wireline providers of telecommunications services - the incumbent telephone and cable companies - one or both of which can make access to physical plant (poles) or switching centres difficult on other physical wireline or virtual service providers. They can implement restrictive policies and practices without notice or compensation to end users and wholesale customers.
A bank can buy/lease a plot of land and open a branch in one location and provide credible competition to residents and SMB's.
A competitive ISP cannot have the same impact within a defined geographic area when the incumbent telco/cableco duopoly holds most of the cards.
One can make or show exceptions in communities of varying sizes, but the bottom line is that overall the incumbent communications companies hold too much sway in our markets to permit effective and widespread competition to occur at the retail level. |
