Bunny1027

Hi all!

I'm currently gathering information on moving to Canada and as I work as a Fibre Telecommunications Engineer for Openreach here in the UK I was wondering what the best Telecoms companies/ISPs are in Canada, both in terms of service and to work for?

Hurlabrick

Bell and Rogers are the biggies (national) - Best????? debateable!.

scrubbedexpat091

We have Fido (owned by Rogers) and they are fine, haven't had issues with them. In the past also used Telus and Freedom, both were fine as well.

Home internet will depend on where your going to reside. Out my way in BC, Shaw and Telus are the big 2, then there are the re sellers like Teksaavy and light speed and others, we use Shaw and they are fine, no major issues.

Rogers and Bell as far as I know don't offer home internet in BC.

caretaker

Depends on where you are moving to. In Saskatchewan I recommend Sasktel.

Bunny1027

I'm looking at Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia as places to move to. Ideally workwise a firm in the same vein as Openreach would be who I want to work for but I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist in Canada, hence why I'm collating a list of ISPs I can look at and apply for when I'm in a better position to move over from the UK.

Hurlabrick

It is a pretty local affair, but you could add Start.ca if you are looking in and around London, ON. They are an ISP, although they use Rogers to connect from the phone pole in the street to the house.

scilly

Rogers is in parts of BC ................ parts of the Island, Lower Mainland, Okanagan, etc.

In fact, Rogers was our cable provider for many years then Rogers and Shaw did a switch to rationalize their service areas.

They're also over much of the country, with emphasis on Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba

Bell is similar.

The 3 largest companies in Canada are Bell, Telus and Rogers (not necessarily in that order.

But there are also huge areas of the country which do not have good coverage by any company

Photoplex

Shaw and Telus are the only tier 1 providers in Alberta. There are other companies that resell their connections, such as Teksavvy - but that's unlikely to be interesting enough for you.

• Shaw are a cable company, like NTL, so the last mile is all copper - much like NTL used to be back in the UK. DOCSIS etc.
• Telus is the closest thing to BT Openreach - DSL/twisted pair based, but they're currently rolling out FTTH in all their major markets (our home in Calgary is scheduled to be fibre connected this year).

Also, Alberta has something called Supernet. A provincial government owned fibre backbone across the whole province, connecting all the urban and rural parts of the province together. It's primarily used by public institutions, but private ISPs also piggyback on it to provide consumer internet services to rural areas where it would be cost prohibitive for a private company to lay their own infrastructure to connect that remote community.

On a side note, I'd look into the use of the term "engineer" here in Canada. It's a protected designation, requiring a 4 year engineering degree, and licensing from the professional engineering body for that province (in Alberta it's APEGA)

Siouxie

https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/jobs/16908/ca

You may struggle to find a similar company to OpenReach. There's a limited number of mainstream telecommunications companies in Canada with their own cable/fibe/exchanges etc.

Lists:
https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gs...h_sf01627.html


What are the Top Telecommunication Companies in Canada
https://www.ctca.ca/most-popular-can...ion-companies/
Member Companies » Canadian Communication Systems Alliance
Jobs
https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/jobs/16908/ca
https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/jobs/16908/22437

seascape

Hi - as an aside, is Supernet considered successful after all these years? I went to visit them back in around 2004 or thereabouts, met with govt, ISPs, superset team etc and it was all an interesting model back then.

JamesM

Most companies have been mentioned.

In Toronto there is a company called Beanfield that is pretty popular with business and condominiums. They service a lot of Telus stuff too.

Atlantic Xpat

Bell have been rolling out Fibre to the Home - Newfoundland (where I live) was one of the first areas in the country to get this. An observation: a certain amount of the work is outsourced to smaller companies. Both in stringing new fibres and home installations. At least thats my experience here.

Photoplex

As far as I know, yes. Bell was awarded the contract renewal last year. As for success in the rural communities - it's always been a challenge to get private companies to deploy local infrastructure in communities with only a few handfuls of households. Supernet was never intended to be last mile.