Mark, well maybe good things will happen to our north in Canada. The government is requiring the cable companies to unbundle their networks,and sell bandwidth to ISP's. Here is a few comments from HLIT's biggest northern customer.
There will be some changes, but all can be for the good," says Ken Englehart, vice president of regulation and law for Rogers Communications Inc. (Toronto), which owns Rogers Cablesystems Ltd. (Toronto), Canada's largest cable operator. "Once we get competitors on them, I think cable networks will be a powerful means of delivering data to the home." Today, Rogers Cablesystems has 19,000 cable modem subscribers in Ontario and British Columbia, out of a total 2.2 million subscribers, he says. The company is discussing access agreements with several ISPs, Englehart says, and these could bolster Rogers' market position by drawing Internet traffic off the telephone network and onto their cable networks. "When ISPs convert dial-up customers to cable, it's a source of increased revenue for us," he says. "ISPs are very market-oriented, and it can be a profitable situation for both parties."
Tim |
