Thursday, November 27, 2008

 

Where is Canada's Covad

CovadI received a press release from Covad earlier in the week, announcing the appointment of William R. Ferraiuolo as the new General Manager for Covad's wholesale division, which accounts for 70 percent of the total company revenues.

It struck me that Canada needs a company like Covad to help wean our ISPs off their self-imposed dependence on Bell's wholesale internet services.
Covad Wholesale Program allows partners to purchase Covad VoIP or broadband services on a wholesale basis and sell these services to their customers under their own brand names.
Why aren't more Canadian ISPs migrating some of their customers onto their own DSLAMs and leased loops? Such a strategy would have been expected in order to improve margins: going from resale of Gateway Access Service onto unbundled access that the ISP controls itself.

This would have been expected especially in any central office that has sufficient density of customers to make the migration economic. That would let the ISP operate completely independently of traffic management imposed by the local telephone company, but it requires some investment.

Why are Canada's independent ISPs so risk averse? Is there an opportunity for a Covad to operate in Canada?

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Posted by Mark Goldberg @ 11/27/2008 06:12:00 AM
Comments:
Good observation Mark - and nice seeing you yesterday! I wonder the same thing - just seems more conservative in Canada. Another problem is our demographics - most SMBs here are too small - under 10 lines - to support a service like Covad. Companies like Natural Convergence and OneConnect haven't had great success, and we have hardly any CLECs to speak of. I did work for Covad last year, and they have great offerings that would do well here, but I don't seem them white labeling outside the U.S. any time soon, which is too bad.
Posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 9:51 AM, November 27, 2008
 
Covad Canada played an important role in the CRTC's creation of the category of DSL Service Providers, who can get access to CLEC-like facilities in order to resell Internet access without being Canadian. (See Order CRTC 2000-983.) I believe Covad Canada filed for CBCA restructuring in 2002 and were wound up not long after (ironically under Charlie Hoffman who had gone over to Covad from Rogers).
Posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 3:28 PM, November 27, 2008
 
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