THE INDEPENDENTS: CCAP - “In the city, you think about clients per pole, but out here it's poles per client.”

IN 1983, MORE THAN 30 years after the first CBC and Radio-Canada television broadcasts began connecting Canadian cities, residents of Lac-Beauport and Lac-Saint-Charles, communities at the foot of the Laurentian Mountains near Québec City, still had no TV reception. So they formed a cooperative, applied for a CRTC licence and began working toward setting up their own distribution network. By 1985, the Coopérative de câblodistribution de l’Arrière-Pays (or Backcountry Cable Distribution Network, known by its French acronym CCAP) had 3,000 subscribers. Thirty years later, it’s still there, and thriving.The company provides TV, internet and landline telephone service to over 17,000...