According to the 2010 Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) report, pertaining to communications in Canada, as much as 95 percent of the residential broadband market is controlled by incumbent telecommunications and cable companies like Bell, Bell Aliant, and Telus.

With the figures brought forth by the CRTC clearly showing that the residential broadband market share of the incumbent telecom companies has virtually remained more or less the same over the last five years, CRTC last week decided that there was a need to inject greater competition in the market.

In its decision last week, CRTC said that incumbent telecom companies should provide independent ISPs with speed-matched open access to their networks.

The CRTC decision, which is part of large-scale hearings and resolutions stretching back many years, will essentially enable competitors to offer Internet services to their retail customers at speeds that correspond to the speeds offered by the incumbents to their own retail customers.

Despite the CTRC decision, there are still some unanswered questions as to whether the ordering of open access with speed matching would provide independent ISPs with everything they need to effectively compete against incumbents. While most of the commission’s members said it would; the commissioner Tim Denton disagreed.

Noting that competition on price alone is not good enough, Denton said that independent ISPs will be required to pass along all the network limitations – like bandwidth caps and traffic management practices – that have been imposed by the incumbents.