Canadian sophistication Neighbors to the north lead network and data advances >BY BETH SNYDER, Switching & Transmission Editor

The stereotypical American image of Canadians is a bunch of beer drinkers dressed in flannel, hunting bears from their snow-drifted cabins in the woods. But the truth is, when it comes to telecommunications network sophistication, the beer drinkers are beating out the gentry to the south.

Bell Canada announced last week that it would be completely digitized by the end of this year. In general, Canadian companies were already ahead of the United States with 80% of their networks digitized, compared with just 60% of those in the U.S. digitized in 1992, according to the Communications Outlook 1995, published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

On the data communications side, a handful of major Canadian service providers like Bell Canada, SaskTel, BCTel and Edmonton Telephone are already providing asymmetric digital subscriber line services at the $50 mark. With the exception of U S West, the Bell regional holding companies are still working on ADSL trials. While some U.S. Internet service providers such as InterAccess are offering ADSL, so are Canadian ISPs such as CADVision.

The digitization of U.S. lines is generally slowed down by the RHCs, whose equipment dates back many years, said Melodie Reagan, director of local and long-distance services for TeleChoice, Verona, N.J. Depending on the location, the infrastructure can range from outdated to modern.

"We have so many providers doing this," she said. "The vast majority of the rest of the world is still served by monopolies with competition emerging.

Another advantage Canadian service providers may have is a smaller number of demanding consumers.

"The general population in Canada is more educationally advanced," said Kieran Taylor, a broadband consultant at TeleChoice. "And the service providers there are a bit smaller than our [RHCs] too, so they can turn on a dime.

BCTel, for instance, serves only about 4 million people who are asking for advanced services such as asynchronous transfer mode and transparent local area network, said Eleanor Jang, a BCTel engineering manager. The company has to be more cost-effective, but it can also be more innovative.

But because the transition to digital networks and adding high-speed services takes time, sometimes being later is an advantage, Reagan said. Transmission equipment prices have dropped, making it easier for U.S. providers to build, she said. Besides, in advance of ADSL services in the U.S., ISDN is finally coming of age as a promising revenue stream-especially for RHCs, she said.

"Carriers in the U.S. have so many choices that they have to struggle against choice," Reagan said. "In other countries, depending on how much competition there is, that's not the case. They still have to make choices, but they're not sitting in the middle of the dynamics we're facing."