Telus, Bell Canada Eye Merger

Here it comes ...

I mean hey, Americans can't have all the monopoly fun can we?

I Really Hope this merge is blocked by the goverment.
Thats WAY to much power for one company.
MONOPOLY

Monopoly ... with CAPS no less.

I do not think so. Each province has 1 or if your lucky 2 big ISP's to choose from. Each stake there territory and respect it while keeping price in the same zone. Telus and Bell are not even in my province for internet access, and the small telephone or mom and pop ISPs cannot cut it.

The state of broadband is utter crap in Canada compared to even USA.

Do these companies compete directly in Canada or is it segregated like AT&T/Verizon?

If there's no direct competition already, it should pass like the AT&T merger did. If they DO compete, a closer look would certainly be warranted...

Adam

It seems some of justification for a merger would be to prevent BCE from being taken over by private investors. Anybody understand why there's otherwise the big interest in taking BCE private? I would imagine most of the players who can do that are already holding hefty amounts of the public stock. In which case, what's the advantage of taking the company off the public market?

First the good. They are selling Bell anyways and I would far rather have it stay a Canadian Company, and not turn into another American company controlling our internet, tv, phone and such EVEN MORE. And the two companies would save a combined $800 million to $1 billion a year. And as far as I know they don't really compete much right now anyways (telus on the west, bell on the east) Biggest competion is that bell has cell phone on the west, and sattelite tv.

But the bad is the it will be a large monopoly. Though at least here in the west there is competion (telus and shaw) and we use shaw for everything, so it should not affect us to much. But I do know that our shaw digital phone goes through the Bell network, which would then become telus, who might want to cut off the competion (shaw) and either stop em from using it or charge them more which in turn could cost us more. (but shaw and bell are probaly on a long large contract so that may take a while)

Overall I am not to against it because as long as they have competion in all their areas the prices should not change much. As long as an american company does not take it over I am happy. The main thing that this will do is create less competion in the wireless market though.

one of them is being less public with what you do. a fully public company atleast in the US has to pretty much make all their costs and activities public so investors and future investors can research the said company.

About the only service they compete in is wireless, and they both use CDMA.

Telus has wireline and intarweb out west (BC I think) and Bell does the same in Ontario and Quebec, plus ExpressVu (think Dish Network lite) across the country.

hahaha....what are you talking about....America already controls your TV and internet.

Thanks. Sounds very similar to BellSouth/AT&T.

Maybe a US company could run it much better. I really hate this forking point of view in Canada we don't care if it sucks long as it's Canada owned or made it's better then some US company owning it or making it.

This is why the government gives money to company's going out of business in Canada just cause it's in Canada. I mean really the people don't shop there already so don't give them my damn tax money.

The US has allot of cash if Canada does not want part of it well they're pretty damn dumb. The state of cable and internet in Canada is now a forking joke. Canada was doing great a few years ago now they want to holy hell.

The pay per byte and caps model will soon be coming to US ISPs also. Whether this merger is needed is a whole different story though.

And that will kill the development of new applications, widgets, tools, etc. overnight...

We need to start a "Will TCH's prediction that billing by the byte is inevitable for the U.S. broadband market" pool.

Anyone want to draft the excel wager spreadsheet?

See poll here:
»[POLL] Is pay per byte coming to the U.S.

I think it's dumb to sell our companies and be subjected to American policies and practices just to get their money.

If the shoe was on the other foot so to speak, do you think they would want us to buy their companies?

Feh! Polls! I want to gamble!

I do all my gambling in the stock market. Though the way I do it, it is hardly gambling.

The future is unfriendly. i can see it now..

Pay per byte will never happen in the US residential arena. And, when I say never, I mean NEVER!

Two reasons:

1) The only time an upgrade is needed is when people complain...which is few and far between. There have only been a few times when mainstream media has even caught wind of widespread poor service quality. Other than those times, "consumers" don't care. People here care, but consumers don't if their 10Gbps cable service runs at 384kbps...as long as the perception is there. That's why companies get by with policing traffic.

2) Also, you're talking about a people that can't stand talking to anyone with anything other than a flat accent for support (be it technical or billing). Do you really think a business will be stupid enough to tack on additional fees on this type people? That's how this whole "net neutrality" talk started, because companies didn't want to pass on any additional costs to consumers.

Where is the incentive to pay per byte?

I'm a bit leery of what this will do to the cell industy in the west. Granted most people are locked into contracts so they can't raise prices (Unless theres some sneeky provision in there), however, I think that bell is the only other serious contender with their own cell towers (I think everyone else just resells, don't quote me on that though). I'm not worried about internet and landlines becuase shaw is properly owning telus in internet and starting to bust through the door with their digital phone.

If there's ever been a PR group that can dress up "billing by the byte" as a cancer cure and a huge boon to consumers, it's the baby bell PR and lobbying folk.

That said, I too doubt it will happen. The closest we may get is the way Bell Canada charges an overage fee if you cross their monthly cap limit.

Suddenly switching to a pure bill-by-the-byte system would be marketing suicide, unless the $$ deal is just fantastic.

pay per byte will never happen in the US but i could very well see low caps coming. the stock holders will demand it so the company makes more money and as such they can try and vote an increase in Dividends.

My prediction, as I've stated before, is that it will eventually go to the cell phone model: you get a certain amount of "package" gigabytes, carefully chosen and priced so that the average user will go slightly over, then get charged an unjustifiably high rate for any usage above that.

However, it's a tough call. While bandwidth demand is increasing quickly, wholesale cost is also decreasing quickly, so it's a question of which is happening faster. There's also the element of competition: every major US provider has siginificant overlap with other providers. While not everyone has two broadband choices, a lot of us do. This competition is the only thing saving us up to this point; no provider wants to be the first with the bad news and bleed customers. "Unlimited" was a huge selling point 10 years ago. That's how the dialup internet startups got customers away from the likes of AOL who were charging by the hour.

True....let me tread lightly using "never" then

That was true, but no longer. The glut left over from the dot.com crash has been largely eaten up. So the drop in wholesale bandwidth cost will no longer continue to drop quickly.

It starts with multi-billion dollar generating companies who sell your clickstream data and charge bogus fees on top of your monthly bill whining that upgrading their networks costs money, apparently.

Maybe next up is a bill by the byte cartoon mascot who pushes for new legislation that promises utopia if ma bell is allowed to charge $5 per GB?

These are very exciting times!