So this question really depends on what the objective is. This really seems to be a knee jerk reaction to a big outage, and an overall dissatisfaction with the big players.

If the objective is to compete on a national scale, we're talking capital investments of something like $10 billion CDN per year. As I recall when I worked in the industry Bell was spending 5-6 billion per year on capital investments, and if you're starting now you're playing catch up, so probably need to double that for a decade or two to catch up.

And that's just capital investments, equipment, software, and cables in the ground. Can this be run way more efficiently, and with less overhead in billing systems and pet projects and the like, sure. But use these numbers just for the realm we need to be in. Let alone the people to build, maintain, upgrade, monitor, respond to outages, etc. Just to try and put that into perspective, the entire federal government spent about $440 billion last year. So we're talking a good 3-4% of the federal budget, for what one of the big 3 is spending. And keeping in mind, they have a lot of power to compete on price and features wherever you get started.

So I'm personally believe that difficult to duplicate infrastructure should be government run. It's simply impractical to go and say we'll have 5 or 10 or 15 competitors, and startups, and bankruptcies when the cables in the ground are so capital intensive. We don't run 15 power lines to each house so everyone can change on a whim. Why are we pretending we can run 15 fiber cables and do the same thing. We don't really want one new big competitor, we want a vibrant market of new approaches and failures to occur.

So set that policy tirade aside, and let's scope down our expectations from nationwide.

I get internet from a small provider, who mainly serves multi-dwelling buildings in the Toronto area. What they've been able to carve out, is a niche where it's cost effective to compete and start from. They're basically leveraging some, I think it was Industry Canada rules changes, that basically say that the telcos aren't able to claim ownership of the wiring inside a building. The provider I use, then just hired some Bell technicians, bought the same DSL remotes Bell was using for the same services, purchased a leased MPLS or similar line back to their data center to the basement of the building, and started making deals with Condo Boards and building owners to offer services. So an internet connection, DSL remote, and some technicians to terminate wires was what they needed to get started. Of course it's more complicated than this, but that's what it sort of boiled down to.

The DSL remotes have a SIP client that can create a phone connection, so you can get home phone, and they built a cheapo IPTV service with some android boxes. Give away telephone, TV and internet for free in the common areas of the building for advertising.

911 services, they just contacted with whoever provides normal 911 services for voip providers.

When I switched to them, it was cheaper than I got with an employee discount in the industry. Last year, they put fiber in, so I've got unlimited gigabit fiber for half the price or less of the big companies. The Big companies of course, now offer unpublished promotions from time to time that are only available to my building. This of course doesn't cover cellular service, but we're back to that capital intensive replication of infrastructure.

I'm glad I'm out of this industry.