Canada's CRTC (The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) is in charge of deciding which internet service providers can get a piece of network access from major telcos such as Bell, Rogers, Telus and resell the service to Canadians at competitive prices.

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TL;DR The rules of the CRTC (The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) are pushing out the smaller players who provide Canadians with affordable internet. It suggests that, overtime, Canadians consumers will have little to no choice when it comes to internet service and its price.

That said, the internet service provider business, is a business like any other and there are several smaller independent players in the Canadian market that want a piece of the pie, to ultimately, provide Canadians with affordable internet services.

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There's a fundamental problem, though.

The CRTC rules inherently protect big telecom companies and therefore minimize the choices consumers have when it comes to high speed internet providers.

Despite the fact that back in 2015, the CRTC mandated that Canada's major players share their highest-speed fibre optic networks with their smaller competitors, but the smaller providers still are unable to gain access; resulting in naturally pushing them out over time.

Some are vehemently against it and are rooting and representing the little guys. The Canadian Operators Network Consortium (CNOC) recently filed an application asking the CRTC to revise their regulations. CNOC represents other internet providers such as, TekSavvy, Distributel and Primus.

Even though this request was made, it's extreamly difficult to fulfill at a physical and structural level.

Massive infrastructure investments would have to be made in order to allow smaller telecom companies to thrive.

The CRTC doesn't want to bear the burden of those investments and has mandated that these smaller players create their own connection points to neighbourhoods when accessing big telcos' fibre networks.

Once again, this is costly in time, resources, and capital, all things smaller businesses don't necessarily have, resulting in naturally pushing them out of competition once again.

It seems like the CRTC is acting against the best interest of the Canadian consumer. We all want cheap internet, don't we? All this begs the question, is Canada destined for an internet service provider monopoly?

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