🚀 go-pugleaf

> The bottom line: NEVER TRUST BELL!!

You're certainly right in the general matter, but I reasonably doubt 
there'll be a real jump in ADSL rates.  Rather, what is more likely to 
happen, are bandwidth caps, a fireall, or other inconveniences thrown at 
us by Sympatico or Bell (if it happens).  Likely, ADSL rates are sure to 
fall instead of go up.   (Then again, heavy ADSL users might have
to pay more, depending on what the competition does)

Why?  They have to compete with Wave.  They know that, and they're
afraid of Wave.   (And look at how Bell dropped long distance phone
rates when long distance competition came!)   There's real competition
in high speed Internet, unlike ISDN which had no other cost 
effective competition.

So far, there is Wave, DirectPC, ADSL and ISDN in the Ottawa area.
ISDN is not as cost-effective for telcos as ADSL, because it involves
the entire switching equipment and they have to upgrade that to 
accomodate capacity for people who stay connected all the time.  
With ADSL, they can upgrade one customer's phone line at a time, 
bypassing the switching equipment.   And because it's a dedicated
connection bypassing the switching equipment, the only extra cost
is bandwidth, not amount of time spent connected online.  

That's where the controversy most likely will be focussed on.  
However, there's competition, and Wave isn't actually charging users
for excess bandwidth at the moment (even though they mention a 1GB
cap, with charges above that).  This may not even happen, depending
on what both Wave and Sympatico does.  They're afraid to make the
"first negative move".   Also, many cable providers in the states 
aren't even charging for bandwidth at the moment.  We are lucky to be 
living in a continent with some of the better local/long distance 
phone rates in the world, and I suspect that there'll be a certain 
degree of reluctance in hiking ADSL rates "wherever possible" due to 
all the competition as well.

Rogers is also upgrading their cable network sooner than anticipated
just because of Sympatico ADSL.   I hear it'll be something like
1.5 or 2.0 MBps (while some say 1.5Mbps by end of January, some
people are now telling me 2.0 Mbps sometime this month for Rogers Wave
instead, though I haven't confirmed)

Moreover, the cost of providing bandwidth is dropping approximately
50% per year on average, and this bandwidth version of "Moore's Law" is 
likely to continue for quite a while.  Technology improvements,
cheaper equipment, cheaper DSLAM's and cable modem head ends,
chips that multiplex multiple connections (ie ADSL) over one
backbone, improved bandwidth over the same old wire, coax and fiber, 
etc, you name them.

I hope high speed Internet competition plays out like the long distance
competition (where a lot of us has benefitted from, even good old Bell 
themselves dropping their rates) when it comes to keeping prices
back down to earth.

_______________________________________________________________________ 
                                          ____ 
Mark D. Rejhon         WinNT.Linux.Win95  \  /  mailto:marky@ottawa.com 
http://www.marky.com/    C.C++.VB.Shell    \/   AlphaWorld Home 10S 15W 

"A friend is someone who will be there without asking anything of you. 
 A friend is someone you know that knows you, and accepts you." 
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