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Some of the most profitable companies in Canada are now threatening to cut rural communities off from high-speed internet because they must now offer internet at fair wholesale prices. What nerve! This, after having built their business on a hundred years of public subsidies and market monopolies, in the case of telcos, or decades of exclusive licences in the case of cablecos — unique privileges that have been exploited to drill hardworking Canadian families over those years with exorbitant telecom costs, among the highest in the industrialized world.

Their outrage is because of a reduction in their incomes that is barely a rounding error. The retroactive payment in question amounts to about $320 million. The CRTC found this to be fair recompense for ISPs that have been subjected to those “unjust and unreasonable” wholesale prices for at least three years. This comes to just over $100 million per year, to be shared by about 100 ISPs.

In those same three years, the six publicly reporting incumbents have generated nearly $60 billion — billion — in operating profit or EBITDA, which means the retro payments are just 0.5 per cent of EBITDA.

And lest anyone think Canadian companies are faring poorly compared to international players owing to the fact we have less densely populated regions to reach, including those darned rural communities, consider that Canadian margins are in fact better than those of their U.S. counterparts, despite the American market’s far greater density. For example, Rogers’ adjusted EBITDA percentage of over 47 per cent in wireline services compares very favourably with Comcast’s 41 per cent. Bell’s 44 per cent margin also handily beats Verizon’s 38 per cent. And Canadian margins are rising.

There is really a lot more to say about this issue, but we’ll leave it at this: the incumbents have no business howling about the unfairness of this recent decision. Any unfairness pales in comparison to what Canadian consumers have had to put up with for years. When assessing the incumbents’ likely appeals, the Federal Court and Cabinet should be as quick as possible in rejecting them so that ISPs can move on to provide Canadians with competitive internet services at fair prices.

George Burger is co-founder of Toronto-based VMedia Inc.