said by wonderer :Whats the infrastructure plan? Since Start does not have any physical copper or fiber in the ground that I am aware of.
Only the telephone companies have copper in the ground and only the cable companies have coax in the ground. There are almost no areas in Ontario where there is an overbuild (ie two competing telephone companies or two competing cable companies) This is due to decades (or a century in the case of Bell) of government protected monopolies that ensured a guaranteed profit margin, ie any time they needed to build something they would apply to the CRTC for a rate payer increase to cover the costs of adding more facilities. The biggest hurdle to competitors being able to roll out an overbuild is simply access to these rights of ways and support structures that the incumbents have had a free ride on building out.
One of the things that gets sadly missed when asked "where do we invest in networks", and the answer is quite simply that we are investing directly every day through the incumbents and cable companies with our significant fees that are then used to build and pay for these networks that everyone uses. Every component we wholesale is at a regulated price that fully compensates the underlying network provider for all of their costs, plus a substantial markup.
This is the most efficient way of expanding networks as it doesn't mean digging up the same streets 10 times to put in 10 new ISP's, with 10 times more 'curb furniture' (the support boxes in your neighbourhoods, etc). If you look at the reinvestment rate of independent ISP's compared to the giants, you'll see that for most independent operators that the vast majority of profit is sunk back into the networks, growth and staffing right here in Canada vs the giants that generally have their massive profits returned as dividends.
That said, we do also have our own infrastructure in downtown London where possible, specifically we have our own DSLAM's in the Clarence CO as well as some fibre in the core. We also have about 50 wireless POP's in the rural areas surrounding London, St. Thomas, Port Stanley, Dutton, Iona, Thorndale, Harrietsville and many more. We are certainly happy to invest and provide back into the communities that support us and where it makes sense we'll continue to lay fibre ourselves, ie between POP's etc.
Hope that helps answer your question?
