I 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?