Is response to competition from cable providers, Bell Canada has announced their Sympatico service will see speed increased to 3Mbps - without any additional cost - beginning in 2004. Users already at 3mbps will be bumped to 4mbps. Discussed in our Sympatico forum and verified via press release, both 3 and 4mbps DSL customers will also see upstream speed increases to 800kbps at a price tag of $44.95 per month.

The move comes after Canadian cable provider Rogers last week announced they'd be delivering 3Mbps to customers. The company had floated between 1.5mbps and 3mbps in the past, but decided to mirror the 3mbps standard push that began in the United States. Rogers upstream speeds also recently jumped from 192kbps to 384kbps.

Bell Canada's speed shift is an obvious response to Canadian cable providers' push to 3mbps, and U.S. subscribers can only hope that domestic telcos eventually follow the same strategy. Bell Canada is, as explored recently in an article, giving customers exactly what they want (sans price reduction) by including upstream increases as well.

"More than half of our customers use the Internet for instant messaging, online games and sharing digital photos - all activities where speed in both directions matters," said Charlotte Burke, senior vice-president, Consumer Internet Services, Bell Canada. "By doubling our speed and increasing our upload performance, we give our customers a much larger door to the Internet and all it has to offer."

In May of 2002 the company wasn't holding that door quite so open, as the decision was made to impose 5 gigabyte per month download caps and raise rates, resulting in a significant ruckus among users. The decision came long before bit or download caps became popular among cable providers. At the time, the company claimed that 92 percent of its subscribers used about 1.5 gigabytes of data per month. Even the company's "high speed ultra" tier faced caps of 10 gigabytes per month.

Bell Sympatico helped its case by eventually raising their base downstream speeds from 1 to 1.5Mbps, and abolishing bit caps altogether this past July. This latest change is a particularly impressive attempt to keep cable providers at bay in Bell Canada's territory.