This is a very sad day.
What industry turmoil?
TekSavvy is the last remaining large internet wholesale provider, as others have been snapped up by bigger rivals in what independent ISPs describe as a challenging regulatory environment.
Roughly half a dozen independent ISPs have been sold since February of 2022From the article
Personally I wouldn’t call that turmoil. I’d call it industry consolidation.
Consolidation can be tumultuous; but I’m just citing the article. They go into much further depth about the situation.
the only turnmoil is the TPIA. When the wholesale rate (regulated by the CRTC) is higher than the retail rate…
But the corruption of our Government[1] is right in our face.
[1] it’s corruption, not incompetent. Also it is pan-partisan. Whichever would be at the helm would be paid for by the telecartel.
Article is subscription only, you can read it here.
Not going to be long until we see the return of tiny data caps with more frequent price increases.
I had Rogshaw come to the door yesterday pushing their merger high-speed promo. Hopefully Teksavvy doesn’t get gobbled up by the three-headed Robelus. Sad day indeed.
I’ve been with Teksavvy for nearly 15 years. This is a sad, sad day.
Same. They’re not just an ISP. They’re strong consumer advocates, bordering on activists. This is terrible.
I’ve been with Start dot CA for a few years and following their sale to Telus, I’ve been seriously considering switching to Teksavvy. This is tragic. Are there any good ones left? Our country is about to have literally no options apart from the big three.
Not any big ones. Maybe locally to you.
I use Coextro. Just some small company operating out of Mississauga. I wouldn’t call them amazing, but they try their best. At the end of the day they are really still at the mercy of Bell or Rogers (depending on if you go dsl or cable). They are smaller so they are likely a bit safer for now from being consumed by the duopoly.
I’ve been with Lightspeed for years. They’re based in Burnaby though, so I don’t know if they are available Canada wide.
Okay, who’s in to form a co-op and buy them?
Even if we did that, it will still die without a drastic change in costs from the CRTC.
Regional co-ops (or regional branches of a national co-op) could provide wireless internet. It’s not ideal but if a person is not willing to accept Rogers, Bell or Telus, it could be acceptable.
Totally. But this is very different from buying TekSavvy. TekSavvy serves the vast majority of their customers via ROBeLUS’es last mile infrastructure. They can’t do that via regional wireless and so whoever buys them will have to keep paying ROBeLUS. If they can’t break even at this point, a new owner such as a co-op will have the same problem. The only owner that won’t is ROBeLUS. The only solution to this conundrum is federal intervention via CRTC, Industry Canada or the government itself. My guess we’ll hear from Jagmeet first.
Oh god no, I don’t think the suggestion is we should form a co-op that buys TekSavvy. I can think of a lot of reasons that’s impractical. But I think there is realistically a space for Internet co-ops to be viable for some parts of Canada, if not universally.
who’s in to form a co-op and buy them?
dang, nvm. *puts sword away*
You have my sword. I don’t have a lot more than that to offer though. And the sword is just a metaphor.
Canada needs co-ops and Canada needs public access to communication networks. Is there a lawyer in the thread?
Well… Damn it
This is a very sad news. I was rooting for them to be the last standing ISP that’s not part of the big tech.
That sucks. Long time Teksaavy customer.
I was with TekSavvy for a long time but they were getting worse. I Switched to Oxio https://oxio.ca which is cheaper and faster than TS was. It’s a brand for Cogeco.
ah yeh Cogeco gobbling smaller ones. Didn’t ShawGers want to buy them at one point?
I’ve been with teksavvy for at least a decade and I’m not too happy to see new customers can save like $400 a year compared to me
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Here’s a non-paywall link: https://archive.is/qfn4r
We were Teksavvy subscribers for 10 years but switched to Bell Fibe last year…all Teksavvy had here was 6 Mbps DSL with a lousy 720 Kbps upload speed. Felt bad because I liked them but needed better internet for today’s demands. CRTC screwed them.
It sucks because my community is still stuck on 100Mbps per second as the max over DSL unless we get cable internet. We have been back and forth between both DSL and cable and find we have issues on both regardless of the provider, router, or modem. At this point I feel like the lines to our neighbourhood/house are just so old and flakey and struggle to handle peak internet usage times. It just feels ridiculous though because there is fibre lines at the end of the street as those lines provide fibre access to the new communities.
These companies have no incentive to upgrade/maintain things beyond their initial installations because they control the market. Third party providers can only do so much when things don’t work. All they can do is essentially put in a ticket with Bell or Rogers and tell them to fix it. And Bell or Rogers uses their contracted workers to say “yeah looks fine to me” and calls it a day.
I’m getting quite sick of the CRTC not doing anything and not stepping in as much as they should be. I also don’t like that I see things like the Bell chairman in private undisclosed meetings with the CRTC. Overall it just seems like corruption runs deep. I guess I’m not really surprised anymore.
CRTC screwed them but they treat their loyal customers EXACTLY like the big three. They fuck us.
Right now new customers can save $400 a year compared to what I was paying for what most consider slow internet (40mbps down and 10 up). There was also an ACT NOW BEFORE ITS TOO LATE offer when I checked, less than two days left to snag a 100mbps plan for the price of a 40mbps one.
Literally no incentive to stay with a provider and be loyal, and all the incentive to hop around or threaten to hop around so that you get these secret special plans that they only pull out as a last resort
This is awful. TekSavvy was a strong advocate for positive change in a terrible, entrenched market, and the entire landscape is going to be worse without them. I guess at this point I hope that we see more municipal broadband efforts like in Olds, Alberta, though I fear that I’m never going to see something like that in any major cities.
Never used TekSavvy but always heard good things
It was great. But lately the support is basically on par with anyone else, ie. really bad.
I concur. It’s terrible. Super terrible. And with the whole TPIA stone walling it’s even worse.
