COMMENTARY: Why it’s so hard to grow an ISP in Canada

By Peter Nowak IMAGINE, FOR A SECOND, someone making fun of you for being too skinny. Then they take all your food away. Got that image in your mind? Okay, good. You’ve just pictured what trying to grow a telecom business in Canada is like. For years, that’s essentially what big companies such as Bell, Rogers and Shaw and their armies of lawyers, lobbyists and hangers-on have been doing to TekSavvy and other independent service providers. They’ve argued that the only good telecom company in Canada is one that builds its own networks head-to-toe, from the poles that hold the...