Here is the problem: Bell can’t cry expense now, because they have had years (and I mean decades) to upgrade their infrastructure and have refused. I am another of those people who lived in an area where a Bell technician came to my home because of problems with the phone line and was told that the company REFUSED to replace the obsolete equipment causing a degradation of my service. That same year they announced they had made a substantial profit. It doesn’t take a genius to put 2 and 2 together and understand that Bell is, was, and always has been in the business of maximizing short-term profits at the expense of long-term service quality, and then crying poor to get the government to subsidize their “upgrades”. As Gabriel said, we have paid over and over and over for the repairs and upgrades to the services and they are LONG overdue.

Your cost breakdowns also are typical BS - it costs x plus y plus z… for most of what you mention, it costs this amount ONCE. This could have been paid years ago in many cases, but instead Bell chose to continue to use dubious, obsolete technology in place of “more expensive” up-to-date equipment. They pay a small amount over and over and over to install garbage rather than invest - and that is, in fact what these upgrades would be if they were done - in the future.

Then to make the dubious claim about filters, modems, and so on by citing CONSUMER level pricing, when in fact Bell/insert generic company name here gets these items at bulk, wholesale rates and often charges customers rental fees FAR exceeding the actual cost of the items in the first year just demonstrates you are either extraordinarily naive, completely ignorant and snowed by your employer, or INTENTIONALLY attempting to mislead people.

They have taken money and profited while ignoring basic rules of proper business conduct and operations for decades, and now things are coming home to roost. Of course their response is to once again try and find away to screw the customers to help with their bottom line, rather than acting like responsible corporate entities. After all, with the joke that is the CRTC, that’s the path of least resistance.

Back on topic:
This is the closest and most realistic commentary I’ve read .. of what the true story is with North American Telcos.

I’d like to add that there is absolutely no problem or reason in using airwaves as high-speed transmission of content at much higher speeds [32 mb/s down and 21 mb/s up (low estimate)] per any user in any part of Canada and at reasonable price of $30 per customer and unlimited.

Only way that Canadians will see this is by protesting VERY LOUDLY and Canada wide against Telco Tyrants. They must also be charged for Illegally Invading Our Privacy with use of DPI and other schemes. Users can also charge the Telcos for lost bandwidth, time wasted in dealing with incompetent and or lying tech support, disconnection fees, double billing which amount to extortion and or fraud.

I wonder how good it would look on Telcos, CRTC and Gov. with 1,000’s of court cases slapped in front of the courts, all requesting full information each Telco has per user per case. If settled our of court users asking 10 to 100 times of original case amount.

Here are some general figures. This does not take into account the server / network infrastructure required to get you to the internet nor the cable infrastructure to reach your house (which we pay tax on by the way). I’ll also skip the bits required to get the dial-tone to the house, etc. and talk just about internet access.

First, the equipment in the house. 4 port DSL modem $50, dsl filters, $2 each. The DSLAM in the Central or remote office, $2400 (for a 24 port model). So we’re already at $150 per dsl port. Now add the routers, switches, servers and internet bandwidth on top.

For fiber to the home (FTTH) the cost is closer to $1000 per port right now. Just the box that goes on the side of the home (referred to as an ONT) and converts from fiber to copper is around $500. Again, add all the internet infrastructure on top of that, as well as new phone equipment to send dial-tone over the fiber.

Personally, we would love to get fiber to the home for everyone in our service area, but it takes time, and a lot of money.