>How long before the public realizes that we are not Rogers' customers, but its hostages?

Won't happen. The average Canadians are one of the most sheep like docile people out there.

Remember when we all banded together to prevent Verizon from introducing competition into our market because it would “take Canadian jobs” and “give our hard earned dollars to the states”?

That happened because of a hostile attack ad campaign by the big 3.

I'm not sure an aggressive astroturf campaign is the same as "us banding together". There was even an anti robellus site[1] set up.

[1] https://realfairforcanada.ca/

What actionable steps can Canadians take?

Well, elect politicians who encourage free markets, and have the least govt in our personal life as much as possible. Easier said than done. Canadians (like most other people) are too stupid to gauge what policies/politicians are good for them.

Good intention. How do you keep markets free?

Like I said, Canadians (like most other people) are too stupid to gauge what policies/politicians are good for them. So true free markets will never happen in practice.

Yes, I'm being pessimistic, but it's the way things are.

Has any of the big cities ever considered its own municipal internet? I would vote for any politician that has that as a platform immediately.

City of Toronto has done some work on it but the mayor of Toronto is also on some Rogers board with a pay for $100k a year

My jaw literally dropped. I cannot believe this level of corruption. Goodness gracious.

You must know that it'd run on Rogers infrastructure though.

Not those kind, I'm wondering if any city has considered making their own infrastructure.

The Ebox and Teksavvy are great, but like you say it's hard to survive on other people's infra, that's why big cities need to make their own.

I have a feeling that to do it right, it'd have to be a collaboration with an enthusiastic private partner, if for no other reason than available expertise. One city, Hamilton, Ontario, years ago tried out free public wifi. Great idea, but this was way back before smartphones were as big, so basically everyone used computers to access the internet. Not a huge deal, but the city rolled it out so poorly that the end result was signal strength that was only usable outside. Since few, again because of the time in which this happened, use an internet connection outside, few people were able to use the service, and it eventually just went away. A week of testing would have found this issue, but nobody in the city thought of doing so, likely because nobody technical enough with enough time was involved in the entire project -- it was simply a great idea, but nothing to back it up.

> Point of sale machines. Supermarkets are accepting only cash

> ATMs. Several banks are incapable of dispensing cash

Back to bartering.

At my local supermarket debit was down but credit card (Visa) was working.

That would make sense, since only Interac relies on Rogers, and it processes debit cards, not credit cards.

Could be one of two things:

1) the site has connectivity so only Interac is down

2) the site has no connectivity and can process credit transactions offline and queue them (don’t tell anyone their expired card will work), but not for debit.

> don’t tell anyone their expired card will work

The expiration date is stored on the card, so expired cards wouldn't work. Revoked cards (eg. ones replaced by the bank) would, though.

Keep in mind that the merchant sets terminal limits for what transactions are allowed to be processed offline, so one might be able to get a burger without connectivity, but not a new TV.

Also, the CRTC helpline and Service Canada and CRA account logins. We were unable to access government services.

Alright, when do we start carrying chickens to buy our gas?

I was in Whistler today -- a lot of multinational retailers running cash only businesses today.