The IT Nerd

For most people in Ontario and Quebec, if you wanted to get an Internet connection that is end to end fibre as opposed to fibre to some box close to your home and coax copper cable the rest of the way, there was only one option. Bell. But that might be changing. In an odd move, and I say that because it wasn’t put out in any press release that I can find, TELUS is apparently expanding their Pure Fibre offering to Ontario and Quebec. If you go to this link and you live in either Ontario or Quebec, you will see this:

Now my first thoughts were as follows:

• How much does this cost?
• Are they setting up their own infrastructure or are they using Bell’s infrastructure seeing as TELUS and Bell already share cell towers in various parts of Canada.

Answering the first question likely points towards what the answer might be for the second one. Here’s how much it costs:

So if you bundle Internet with getting access to a number of streaming services, it’s $109/month. But if you bundle up Internet with TELUS Mobility, it’s $10 cheaper. I for one would be interested in what the price is for those who don’t want to bundle anything. The fine print can help you with that.

So the regular price is $130 a month. Honestly that isn’t a good deal. Distributel which is a Bell company will serve up a 1GB connection to your home for just under $70 a month. Now some of you will say that TELUS is offering a 1.5Gbps connection. My response to that is that it doesn’t matter. As I said here, nobody needs more than 500 Mbps into their home as nobody can fully leverage that connection speed.

That brings me to the question of whether TELUS is rolling out its own infrastructure to support their Internet ambitions, or are they leveraging Bell’s infrastructure. I’m thinking that it’s the latter because if TELUS had its own infrastructure, they would price their offering to try and steal customers from Bell. That’s not happening here as their pricing is a bit higher than other companies that resell Bell’s services. For example Teksavvy who have this price for service to my address:

So is TELUS Pure Fibre an option for those who want Internet access via end to end fibre. I suppose it is. But Bell is going to be the cheapest option because they have their own infrastructure. Though you may have to deal with their rather problematic customer service to save some cash for a year or two until they hike the price on you. If you’re a Bell customer, this isn’t a better option if you have had your promo pricing expire and you can find lower prices elsewhere. Distributel as illustrated above is an example of that. What is a real alternative to Bell that gets you fibre is Beanfield as they do have their own infrastructure unlike TELUS. But only if you’re in an area that they serve. I say that because I have seen examples where Bell is hyper aggressive in terms of their pricing if Beanfield is an option for customers.

What this continues to illustrate is that there still is a need to have more players with their own infrastructure to create more competition in the telco landscape. Because while this move into Ontario and Quebec is mildly interesting, it doesn’t move the needle in terms of lower telco prices for Canadians.

This entry was posted on October 20, 2024 at 8:22 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Telus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.