This article from the National Post, dated 12/10/98, is about Bell Canada's DSL product. The article offers an interesting contrast to the prior article posted about cable telephony. Notice the paragraphs in bold. In the same geographic market, Bell Canada & Nortel, with DSL, are competing with Videotron and Cisco with cable access.
nortel.com
Bell Canada Takes on Cable Companies with Internet Access
Nortel's DSL Technology:
Customers Will Pay a Premium For the Extra Speed
By David Akin
12/10/98
National Post
Bell Canada is the first Canadian telephone company to jump into the
high-speed residential Internet access market with a pricing plan aimed straight at what had been the exclusive franchise of Canada's cable companies.
Bell Global Solutions announced yesterday it would offer a high-speed
residential service immediately in Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto.
The service would use Northern Telecom Ltd.'s 1-Meg Modem, a device that uses digital synchronous line ( DSL ) technology to transfer data over copper phone lines at speeds of up to 960,000 bits per second.
In choosing the Nortel DSL technology, Bell said it will not pursue
implementing faster but more expensive DSL technologies for household use.
Other types of DSL technologies can move data over the Internet at speeds of up to 10 million bits per second.
Cable modems can transfer data from the Internet to a consumer's PC at speeds of up to 1.5 million bits per second.
Most consumers access the Internet over phone lines at speeds of between 30,000 and 50,000 bits per second.
Higher-speed modems let consumers access a richer array of multimedia
services, such as online gaming, short videos, and photo-rich Web sites.
Nortel's 1-Meg Modem has another characteristic long coveted by consumers: it doesn't tie up the phone line which means a consumer can talk on the phone while surfing the Web.
And, like cable modems, Nortel's 1-Meg Modem is "always on," which means a customer will be connected to the Internet whenever the computer is turned on.
Consumers, though, will pay a premium for the extra speed and convenience.
While regular dial-up Internet access service costs between $15 and $30 a month in most Canadian cities, Bell's service will cost $39.95 a month - the same price Rogers Cablesystems and Shaw Communications Inc. charges for Internet-over-cable service in Toronto and Ottawa. Le Groupe Videotron charges customers in Montreal, Hull, and Quebec City $34.95 a month for cable modem Internet service.
Meanwhile, other Internet service providers are clamouring for access to phone and cable systems so they, too, can offer high-speed consumer service.
"The rest of the industry is concerned that they can't do the same thing," said Ron Kawchuk, president of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers.
"Bell is the monopoly supplier of copper and of the local loop, and it looks like they want to become the monopoly supplier of the DSL service."
Internet expert Jim Carroll said that without competition from other providers, consumers can expect little downward price pressure for high-speed consumer access.
"You've got the cable companies and you've got Bell. If the other providers can't play then you're not going to have that price competition," said Mr. Carroll. "I think it will probably sit at $39.95 for quite some time."
Across Canada, there are about 130,000 cable modem customers.
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