[Sturgeon Falls, CANADA] America Online
Canada launched its new high-speed AOL Plus service over cable
television lines Wednesday.
The venue for the launch was a small Ontario town far from any major market,
but it constitutes another step in opening up cable networks to competitive
ISPs.
The trial service was launched in Sturgeon Falls, a community of a little
more than 5,000 people some 50 miles east of Sudbury, Ontario.
AOL Canada first announced in September 1999 their plan to introduce high
speed broadband access over cable, with Sturgeon Falls targeted as the first
market.
Unlike regulators in the U.S., the Canadian Radio-Television and
Telecommunications Commission, has decreed that cable operators must make
their networks available to competitive ISPs.
But there has been almost no movement there by the country’s big players,
most of whom have launched their own service or partnered with cable ISP
Exite@Home, and then complaining that technical issues make it difficult to
allow other ISPs on board.
AOL put a name to its high-speed service last month when it announced
“Plus”, designed to be delivered via digital subscriber line (DSL) and
satellite links in addition to cable.
In the U.S., AOL has been a champion of forcing cable companies to allow other
ISPs to access their lines, in the same way as the telecoms have had to
share their networks with competitors.