As we wrote yesterday, terminology in describing the industry participants is an imprecise art and it is complicated by mergers and acquisitions.
Allstream and Sprint Canada have vanished as independent national facilities based competitors and now are part of hybrid organizations. In Allstream’s case, as the national operations of MTS, it is now referenced by the CRTC as part of the ‘ILECs out-of-territory’ category. Sprint Canada, since its acquisition by Rogers, is presumably part of the ‘Cable BDU’ category.
These industry structural changes make it difficult to examine year-over-year shifts in the market. In the CRTC‘s monitoring report, the examination of the Business Internet access market (Table 4.4.6) may have been distorted by the M&A; activity.
M&A; also is a factor in looking at Table 3.1.1, Total telecommunications revenues by type of service provider. Revenues from ‘Other facilities-based’ carriers has declined from $3.4B in 2001 to less than $100M in 2005. The acquisitions by MTS and Rogers of Allstream and Sprint Canada respectively explain most of the shift.
As a result, much of the growth in ILEC out-of-territory revenue between 2003 and 2004 and in Cable BDU growth for 2005 over 2004 is actually due to M&A; activity, rather than organic customer acquisitions.