We've often talked about how Canada was actually seeing some significant growth in their broadband sector early on, with users seeing faster speeds at fairly reasonable prices. The country also consistently ranked very high in the global broadband penetration rankings -- despite the evil bogeyman known as "geography" -- which many here in the states use to justify the United States' broadband failings. Things were going well for Canadian broadband. But then Canada decided to start mirroring United States broadband policy.

That would be fine if the United States actually had a broadband policy. The problem has been that for a decade the United States broadband policy consisted of letting the biggest carriers have whatever they wanted (taxpayer subsidies with no strings or accountability, fewer price controls, fewer consumer protections, laws banning towns from wiring themselves with broadband, any merger they saw fit), and then just hoping that telecom Utopia magically blossomed from the ashes.

While proponents of such policies pretended they were simply trying to unleash a "free market," the reality was that investors, lobbyists and executives were busily creating uncompetitive monopoly and duopoly markets, where the biggest carriers literally wrote the laws that governed the competitive landscape. While carriers pretended to love the free market and loathe regulation, they were working tirelessly to impose burdensome regulation upon smaller competitors.

Unsurprisingly, this resulted in less competition. Less competition unsurprisingly resulted in U.S. consumers seeing some of the slowest speeds and highest prices among most developed nations. It also resulted in the slow but steady death of independent ISPs, who could barely afford to build their own networks, much less navigate the political minefield created by lawmakers leashed by companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

The reality is there is always a balance between free market ideals and intelligent, reasonable regulation to be debated on a case by case basis. But somehow carriers in the States managed to convince the entire country that progressively gutting all regulatory oversight of carriers -- and putting company executives in charge of regulating the very companies they worked for -- was the path to telecom nirvana.

Canada's biggest carriers managed to convince Canadian politicians (via campaign contribution) that this model was one to mirror, and the results aren't surprising. GigaOM directs our attention to a new study (pdf) from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, noting that Canada's broadband fortunes (at least consumer fortunes) are dwindling:We've watched Canada's biggest carriers grow more powerful, while independent Canadian ISPs slowly have been fighting for their life. Canadian regulators like the CRTC, stocked with former Bell and Rogers executives, have repeatedly ignored anticompetitive attacks on small carriers. Regulators have tried to prevent wireless competitors from entering the market because they weren't Canadian enough (aka protectionism). Cable's biggest carriers are happily now imposing ridiculously low caps and high per gigabyte overages, while Canada's falling down the rankings in terms of price per MB, speed, and broadband penetration.

Canada's Globe and Mail, responding to the report, took the opportunity to call for a new Canadian national broadband policy. As we see here in the United States, you'll see all manner of suggestions for how things could be fixed. But few will bother to note that the root of the problem, both in the United States and Canada, rests with letting your biggest and wealthiest carriers dictate policy, while marginalizing consumer interests at every possibility. Carriers don't want competition, therefore in markets where carriers control regulators you (now stick with us, class, this gets complicated) often won't see any.

Of course if Canada does decide to create a new national broadband plan, they probably should avoid mirroring their neighbors to the south this time. Every indication is that aside from some much needed funding for rural expansion, the Unites States' new national broadband plan talks a lot, but makes no real bold choices. It focuses on absolutely everything under the sun, from distracted driving to community engagement -- but at no point does it really tackle the lack of competition -- or how the biggest telecom players work very hard to push government to keep it that way.