TekSavvy West and the wholesale bill behind independent ISP trust

The bill comes before the brand

Start with the wholesale bill, because that is where the western Canadian story is decided. In April 2026, the CRTC set the final aggregated wholesale fibre-to-the-premises access rate for TELUS in Alberta and British Columbia at $77.21 per month for speeds from 15 Mbps to 1500 Mbps, and $81.81 for 1501 Mbps to 5000 Mbps. It also set TELUS's capacity-based billing rate in those provinces at $42.12 per 100 Mbps, a no-site-visit install, move or change charge at $6.71, and a site-visit charge at $250.67 (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2026/2026-77.htm). Those numbers are not a theoretical policy footnote. They are the floor under any independent retail offer that uses that mandated fibre input in TELUS western territory.

Now put that bill beside the retail storefront. Third-party plan trackers in July 2026 show TekSavvy's Cable 100 Unlimited plan in western Canada at $48.95 per month for 12 months and $88.95 afterward, with 100 Mbps down, 10 Mbps up, unlimited data and no term contract (https://www.whistleout.ca/Internet/Providers/TekSavvy/Cable/Cable-100-Unlimited). PlanGenius separately lists Cable 100 Unlimited (West) at $48.95 per month for 100 Mbps service in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, while describing western cable as using Rogers, formerly Shaw, infrastructure (https://www.plangenius.ca/internet/best-teksavvy-internet-plans-in-canada-the-complete-guide/). TekSavvy's own address-qualified fibre and offer pages list regular service rates of $114.95 for Fibre 3 Gig, $94.95 for Fibre 1 Gig and $74.95 for Fibre 500 (https://www.teksavvy.com/services/fibre/, https://offers.teksavvy.com/).

Those figures are not all the same product. Cable resale in western Canada, TELUS wholesale FTTP, TekSavvy's own fibre offers in select markets, and Rogers/Shaw cable inputs each carry different costs and rights. But that is the point. TekSavvy West is a spread business only in the narrow sense that retail price must exceed wholesale input. It is a trust business in the wider sense that the customer must believe the extra dollars, the slower upload tier, the address qualification delay, the modem return and the support call are worth choosing a smaller provider over the carrier whose facilities actually enter the home.

The economic decision changed by the evidence is therefore direct: a household, lender or acquirer should not value TekSavvy West as a generic ISP brand. It should value the company by address cohort. A customer on Rogers/Shaw cable at a promotional $48.95 price has different economics from a customer on TELUS FTTP at a $77.21 access floor plus capacity and support cost. A customer who stays because TekSavvy is trusted has different value from one who joined only for a first-year discount and will leave when the bill resets. The most important private document would be a province-by-province cohort file showing access technology, wholesale tariff, capacity usage, support tickets, churn, promotional roll-off, modem return losses and gross margin by plan. Without that file, the public evidence says TekSavvy's independence is an asset only where trust and support lower churn enough to offset tariff exposure. Where they do not, independence becomes a regulated spread trade with little room for mistakes.

The comparison becomes harsher because the incumbent's own retail offers can sit close to, or below, the cost level a competitor must pay. TELUS's PureFibre 1.5 Gig offer page listed a July 2026 price of $105 per month for months 1 to 60, with unlimited internet data and a 24-month service agreement carrying a declining cancellation fee (https://www.telus.com/en/deals-and-bundles/purefibre-internet-1500). Rogers, which now includes Shaw's western cable footprint, shows Rogers Xfinity Ultimate 1 Gigabit at $110 per month for a 24-month term on its Rogers Together With Shaw plan page, with a listed price of $135 without the time-limited savings and auto-pay discount (https://rogerstogetherwithshaw.com/). These headline prices vary by address and deal cycle, but they demonstrate the retail ceiling. If the independent's input is $77.21 before capacity, interconnection, billing, bad debt, customer support, marketing, router logistics and profit, then a $100 to $110 incumbent fibre or cable bundle can turn the smaller provider's room to manoeuvre into a very thin corridor.

That is the margin squeeze in plain language. The wholesale rate determines whether TekSavvy can sell trust as a product. The retail market determines whether customers will pay for that trust after the promotion ends. The regulator determines how much room exists between those two lines. The carrier that owns the last-mile network determines much of the operational experience when installation, repair, provisioning or outage diagnosis crosses the access boundary. The customer sees only one thing: whether the internet works, whether the price is fair, and whether the company on the bill helps when it does not.

Why TekSavvy West exists as more than a web offer

The directory record for TekSavvy Solutions Inc. West points to AS20375, and that is a useful place to begin because it separates a thin marketing label from a network identity. PeeringDB lists "Teksavvy Solutions Inc. West" under TekSavvy Solutions Inc., with ASN 20375, IRR as-set AS20375:AS-CUSTOMERS, network type Cable/DSL/ISP, 20 IPv4 prefixes, one IPv6 prefix, 100-1000 Mbps traffic, a heavy inbound ratio, regional scope and a TekSavvy website override (https://www.peeringdb.com/net/11449). The same page lists a peering contact at peering@teksavvy.ca and describes the RIR status as ok.

The caution is that AS20375 does not appear to be the active public backbone of today's TekSavvy consumer network. BGP.Tools says AS20375 is not currently in the global routing table; it shows the ARIN whois excerpt for TEKSAVVY-WEST, registration on 7 July 2010, and TekSavvy Solutions, Inc. at 800 Richmond St in Chatham, Ontario (https://bgp.tools/as/20375). Hurricane Electric's BGP view similarly says AS20375 has not been visible in the global routing table since 21 July 2018 and shows the historic peer as AS5645, TekSavvy Solutions, Inc. (https://bgp.he.net/AS20375). In a retail economics article, that matters. "West" is a real public network identity, but the current scale evidence sits more heavily with TekSavvy's main AS5645.

AS5645 is the stronger operating signal. PeeringDB lists TekSavvy Solutions Inc., also known as TSI, as AS5645 with AS-TEKSAVVY, network type Cable/DSL/ISP, 500 IPv4 prefixes, 80 IPv6 prefixes, traffic of 1-5 Tbps, heavy inbound ratio, North American scope and a looking-glass URL (https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1396). It also publishes a settlement-free interconnection policy that emphasizes in-country interconnection for Canada-to-Canada traffic and common public exchanges. Its exchange list includes CANIX Montreal, Equinix Chicago, HFXIX, MBIX, MonctonIX, SIX Seattle, TorIX, VANIX, YXEIX and YYCIX, with 100G entries at Equinix Chicago, TorIX and YYCIX. BGP.Tools describes AS5645 as a 21-year-old network with 334 peers, three upstreams and five downstreams, and lists GTT, Arelion and Zayo as upstreams in its view (https://bgp.tools/as/5645). Hurricane Electric's BGP page shows AS5645 originating 88 prefixes in all, including 85 IPv4 and three IPv6 prefixes, with ten internet exchanges (https://bgp.he.net/AS5645).

That evidence does not prove profitability, customer count or service quality. It does prove that TekSavvy is not only an invoice wrapper. It has routing, interconnection, IP resources, peering policy, Canadian exchange presence and enough traffic to make capacity and route choice economically meaningful. A pure reseller with no network discipline is almost entirely hostage to the last-mile supplier. TekSavvy still depends heavily on last-mile suppliers, but it has its own technical surface behind the retail relationship. That distinction matters when a customer complains about buffering, latency or a regional outage. It also matters when a buyer asks whether the business has transferable capabilities or only a customer list.

The western layer is especially interesting because it is both networked and dependent. TekSavvy can appear in Vancouver, Calgary and western cable markets because wholesale access lets an independent sell service over facilities it did not build. But the public exchange and AS records show that TekSavvy also invests in interconnection and routing in Canada. The economic question is where the value actually resides. If the scarce asset is the customer's belief that TekSavvy is fair, then the brand and support desk matter most. If the scarce asset is traffic scale and peering, then AS5645's Canadian exchange presence matters. If the scarce asset is access to the home, then Rogers/Shaw cable, TELUS copper, TELUS fibre and CRTC rates matter more than either brand or backbone.

The answer is not one layer. TekSavvy West is an assembler. It assembles last-mile access, IP transport, customer service, billing, regulatory advocacy, plan packaging and a counter-incumbent identity. In benign rate conditions, the assembler can generate value by being leaner and more trusted than the incumbent. In hostile rate conditions, the assembler can be squeezed because every extra support call, bad debt incident, truck-roll dependency or promotional discount comes out of a spread already narrowed by tariffs.

The regulatory memory that shaped the business

The current CRTC rate order sits on top of a long fight over whether wholesale access would remain a viable way to discipline Canadian broadband prices. In August 2019, the CRTC set final wholesale high-speed access rates that it said would facilitate competition, promote innovation and support more affordable prices (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2019/2019-288.htm). The order included retroactive application for many rates back to March 2016, or January 2017 for Shaw's transition to capacity-based billing. For independent ISPs, 2019 looked like the moment the access bill would finally move toward a more workable cost floor.

That did not hold. In May 2021, the CRTC reviewed the 2019 order and found substantial doubt about the correctness of the rates, including monthly capacity rates, end-user access rates and service charges (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2021/2021-181.htm). A CRTC news release said the regulator was adopting the interim rates, with adjustments, as final rates and wanted to move toward a disaggregated model (https://www.canada.ca/en/radio-television-telecommunications/news/2021/05/crtc-sets-final-wholesale-rates-for-broadband-services.html). For TekSavvy and other wholesale-based ISPs, that reversal mattered because business plans written around lower input costs were suddenly exposed to a higher cost regime.

The dispute did not stay inside the CRTC. TekSavvy took the fight through the courts. The Wire Report reported on 27 March 2025 that the Supreme Court of Canada rejected TekSavvy's request for leave to appeal the CRTC's reversal of the 2019 rate decision, leaving the Federal Court of Appeal's 2024 decision in place (https://www.thewirereport.ca/2025/03/27/supreme-court-dismisses-teksavvys-wholesale-rates-appeal/). The article summarized the roots of the case: a 2019 decision that would have cut wholesale rates, a 2021 reversal, and TekSavvy's argument that the reversal was legally flawed. The court result did not set a new retail price. It closed one path by which independent providers hoped to restore the earlier rate outcome.

That history explains TekSavvy's public tone. On its regulatory submissions page, TekSavvy says wholesale rates are central to its ability to compete and links a series of filings and public positions on the wholesale framework (https://www.teksavvy.com/policies/regulatory/regulatory-submissions/). In a November 2023 press release, TekSavvy welcomed the prospect of fibre access but said the interim CRTC decision was flawed by high wholesale rates and by being restricted to Ontario and Quebec at that stage; it argued that the wholesale rates Bell and TELUS would charge smaller competitors were higher than many retail prices those companies charged their own customers (https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/teksavvy-urges-crtc-to-deliver-real-price-relief-for-internet-services-for-consumers-in-all-regions-of-canada-860204332.html). The same release said TekSavvy was not currently for sale and remained Canada's largest independent telecom service provider. That statement is useful because it turns acquisition chatter into something measurable: the hard public fact is not a sale, but a business saying it wants to stay independent while warning that rates make competition difficult.

The CRTC then moved again. Telecom Decision 2023-358 provided temporary aggregated wholesale FTTP access in Ontario and Quebec, noting that the number of Canadians buying internet from independent wholesale-based competitors had fallen by 40% even as total internet subscribers had grown, and that independent competitors served 47% fewer subscribers in Ontario and Quebec at the end of 2022 than two years earlier (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2023/2023-358.htm). Telecom Regulatory Policy 2024-180 then required the largest telephone companies to provide competitors with workable wholesale FTTP access across Canada by 13 February 2025, while exempting newly deployed fibre for five years and requiring large ISPs to rely on their own networks in their traditional territories (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2024/2024-180.htm). In June 2025, the CRTC declined to vary that final decision, saying more than a dozen providers were already using fibre access at cost-based interim rates and that thousands of households had subscribed to services enabled by the framework (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2025/2025-154.htm).

The 2026 final rate order therefore did two things at once. It gave the market a firmer number, and it preserved the argument. The CRTC says the rates are cost-based and just and reasonable. CNOC, the Competitive Network Operators of Canada, responded that final fibre rates would not restore independent consumer internet competition and pointed to a halving of independent ISP market share since 2020 (https://www.cnoc.ca/). Those positions are not mutually confusing; they are the two sides of the rate-setting problem. If the rate is too low, the network owner says investment is punished. If the rate is too high, the wholesale customer says retail competition is performative. TekSavvy West lives in that gap.

The western price stack is less forgiving than the marketing page

Western Canada looks attractive because the retail problem is easy to describe. A household in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Regina or Winnipeg wants a plan that is fast enough, stable enough, and not padded with surprise fees. A provider that says "no term contract" and "unlimited data" has a simple hook. The harder issue is that western last-mile economics are not one market.

On cable, the relevant legacy footprint is now Rogers/Shaw. Rogers acquired Shaw in 2023, giving Rogers a western cable base that reaches into British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. TekSavvy's western cable offers are therefore not only "TekSavvy prices"; they sit on top of tariffed or commercially structured access to a large cable operator's last-mile plant. WhistleOut shows a TekSavvy 1 Gbps unlimited cable plan at $77.95 per month for 12 months and $127.95 afterward in its plan table, while showing the 100 Mbps plan at $48.95 for 12 months and $88.95 afterward (https://www.whistleout.ca/Internet/teksavvy-internet-plans). Rogers Together With Shaw lists its own Ultimate 1 Gigabit at $110 per month for a 24-month term and $135 without stated time-limited savings and auto-pay discount (https://rogerstogetherwithshaw.com/). A customer comparing those pages sees a familiar retail trade: lower first-year price and independent brand versus a larger incumbent bundle and a contract-like commitment.

On fibre, the western issue is TELUS. The CRTC final order sets TELUS Alberta/British Columbia wholesale FTTP access at $77.21 for 15 Mbps to 1500 Mbps and $81.81 for 1501 Mbps to 5000 Mbps, plus capacity charges (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2026/2026-77.htm). TELUS's own PureFibre 1.5 Gig marketing has been visible at $105 per month under a long promotional window (https://www.telus.com/en/deals-and-bundles/purefibre-internet-1500). A reseller cannot look only at $105 and $77.21 and assume $27.79 of margin. It must pay capacity, transport, equipment, payment processing, customer service, bad debt, regulatory overhead, marketing, order handling and the cost of serving customers who call when an incumbent's field process slows down an install. It must also deal with the fact that customers compare headline speed and bill price, not the access provider's cost ledger.

On DSL and legacy access, the problem is demand. Customers increasingly want faster upload, lower latency and fibre-class reliability. CRTC 2023-358 described higher-speed internet as a segment where wholesale-based competitors had fallen behind because they lacked a practical way to sell over incumbent telephone-company FTTP networks (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2023/2023-358.htm). That is why fibre access matters so much. A provider that remains trapped in legacy DSL or lower-upload cable tiers can retain price-sensitive customers, but it risks losing households that use video calls, cloud backup, gaming, home offices, cameras and streaming across many devices.

The first western underwriting question is therefore not "what is TekSavvy's price?" It is "what is the customer's access path?" A $48.95 Cable 100 customer in Edmonton may be a low-revenue, low-speed, price-sensitive account with a promotional cliff. A fibre customer using mandated TELUS input may have a higher speed ceiling but a higher input floor. A customer served through the main AS5645 network may benefit from TekSavvy's routing and peering choices, but the last-mile repair path can still point to the incumbent. The same logo can cover very different unit economics.

That is why the customer cohort file matters. A useful file would separate British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba; Rogers/Shaw cable, TELUS FTTP, TELUS copper, any TekSavvy-owned fibre, business service and legacy voice; first-year promotional accounts and regular-rate accounts; customers within 90 days of renewal; customers who contacted support more than twice in a billing cycle; customers who had a failed installation or outage credit; and customers who joined from an incumbent versus from another independent provider. A seller without that file is asking the buyer to price average revenue. A buyer with that file can price churn risk and tariff exposure.

Independence is a product, but it has a cost structure

TekSavvy's brand equity is built on being different from the national incumbents: independent, plain-spoken, willing to fight for wholesale competition, less bundle-heavy, and more aligned with customers who dislike large-carrier billing tactics. That identity has economic value. It can reduce acquisition cost when customers recommend the service. It can lengthen tenure when the bill is clear. It can let a household accept a lower upload tier or a more complicated transfer because the relationship feels more honest. It can also turn regulatory advocacy into customer retention; people who follow the CRTC wholesale fight may see TekSavvy as the carrier that speaks for them.

But independence is not free. It costs staff time, legal filings, regulatory work, customer support and public communication. It also creates expectations. If TekSavvy says it is the fairer alternative, a confusing bill hurts more than it would at a national carrier whose reputation is already low. If TekSavvy says it is customer-friendly, a support delay caused by the incumbent access owner still lands on TekSavvy's relationship. If TekSavvy says no term contract, promotional roll-off must be clear enough that customers do not feel trapped even when they can leave.

Public customer sentiment is therefore relevant, but it should be treated as signal rather than proof. Trustpilot's TekSavvy page showed 400 reviews, with a majority of recent reviewers unhappy and themes around outages, support delays, equipment returns and pricing changes (https://www.trustpilot.com/review/teksavvy.com). The Canadian Trustpilot page summarized 169 recent reviews as mostly unhappy, citing outages, inconsistent connections, slow speeds and support difficulty (https://ca.trustpilot.com/review/teksavvy.com). The Better Business Bureau complaints page shows individual billing and equipment-return disputes and company responses, while BBB customer reviews show a low average rating from a small review base (https://www.bbb.org/ca/on/chatham/profile/internet-service/teksavvy-solutions-inc-0187-1050879/complaints, https://www.bbb.org/ca/on/chatham/profile/internet-service/teksavvy-solutions-inc-0187-1050879/customer-reviews). Reddit threads in r/teksavvy include both recommendations and complaints, including discussion of whether people would recommend the provider in 2025 and posts about price increases, slow periods and dependence on underlying Rogers outages (https://www.reddit.com/r/teksavvy/comments/1lyb7df/based_on_this_year_2025_alone_would_you_recommend/, https://www.reddit.com/r/teksavvy/comments/1h6xy2t/anyone_currently_on_the_cable_100_plan_how_is/).

Those pages are not a statistically clean customer survey. They over-represent people with a reason to post. They may mix regions, access technologies and time periods. They may blame TekSavvy for failures caused by a cable or telephone access owner. But they identify the cost centres that decide the thesis: billing clarity, support reachability, outage information, modem return handling, installation expectations and price-reset communication. Those are the places where a trust brand earns its margin or loses it.

The CRTC's 2026 market report reinforces the point at market level. It says internet issues reported to the CCTS rose in 2025, with incorrect charges and intermittent-service problems among the most common issues (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/policymonitoring/2026/ctmr.htm). It also says perceptions of choice have improved while opinions about internet providers have declined, and that certain regional providers consistently have higher recommendation scores than large main brands. In other words, the market still gives smaller and regional providers a trust opening, but that opening is not guaranteed. The same report says independent wholesale-based ISPs continued to lose both subscribers and revenue in 2024, while retail churn grew slightly, particularly for some large incumbents and independent wholesale-based operators.

That is the paradox. Customers may like smaller providers more, yet smaller providers can still lose subscribers if the cost floor prevents them from matching price, speed, bundle and installation convenience. Independence is an asset only if it converts into lower churn or higher willingness to pay. If it produces admiration without retention, it has brand value but not enough economic value.

Switching costs are falling in rules, but not in life

The CRTC has tried to reduce formal switching friction. Telecom Regulatory Policy 2026-43 amended consumer protections so Canadians can modify or cancel cellphone and internet plans without fees that discourage switching, with new protections coming into effect on 12 June 2026 (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2026/2026-43.htm). The CRTC's news release said it was eliminating extra fees to activate, change or cancel a plan to give consumers more flexibility to take better offers (https://www.canada.ca/en/radio-television-telecommunications/news/2026/03/crtc-eliminates-fees-to-make-it-easier-to-switch-internet-and-cellphone-plans.html). The same decision recognized that some smaller and wholesale-based providers were concerned because they can incur wholesale costs that may be hard to recover from retail customers.

For TekSavvy West, lower switching fees cut both ways. They make it easier for a dissatisfied Rogers, TELUS or Bell customer to try TekSavvy. They also make it easier for a TekSavvy customer to leave when a promotional rate expires or an incumbent flanker brand drops a door-to-door offer. In a market with high fixed costs and thin spreads, reduced friction can increase gross additions and churn at the same time.

The real switching cost is not only a cancellation fee. It is the day a household must spend waiting for an install. It is the risk that remote work fails during a transfer. It is the uncertainty over who returns which modem. It is the email address, Wi-Fi network name, smart-home devices, parental controls, billing date and credit-card update. It is the fear that a lower advertised price will become a higher bill after 12 or 24 months. It is the support call during an outage when the retail provider depends on an incumbent technician's information. These costs are why a good independent ISP can retain customers even without the cheapest headline price. They are also why one bad transfer can erase years of goodwill.

A concrete western scenario shows the unit economics. A Calgary household sees TekSavvy Cable 100 West at a first-year price below its current Rogers/Shaw bill. The household works from home, streams in the evening and needs stable video calls. The transfer requires address validation, modem compatibility, cancellation timing and a new billing arrangement. If the switch works cleanly, TekSavvy gains a customer who may be grateful for a lower bill and less bundle pressure. If the switch fails, the support desk pays in call time, the customer may demand credits, and the household may go back to Rogers or TELUS with a negative story. The tariff is only the first cost. The operational handoff is the margin event.

The same logic is harsher for small business. A cafe, clinic, repair shop or local office may care less about a $15 residential saving than about payment terminals, bookings, cameras, voice service and cloud software. A provider selling trust must know when not to sell a fragile transfer. The gross margin on a small business account can be attractive, but the cost of a failed installation or ambiguous outage ownership can exceed months of contribution.

This is where TekSavvy's network evidence helps but does not solve the issue. AS5645's peering and Canadian interconnection can improve traffic economics and performance after traffic reaches TekSavvy's network. It cannot independently fix a last-mile fault on Rogers/Shaw or TELUS infrastructure. The best retail promise, therefore, is not "we own the whole path." It is "we know the path, we tell you which part we control, and we stay accountable when the access owner is involved." That kind of honesty is hard to advertise, but it is exactly where an independent ISP can separate itself from a national carrier script.

Consolidation is the shadow price of wholesale weakness

The Canadian independent ISP sector has already shown what happens when the spread becomes too narrow. The CRTC's 2025 telecommunications market report said the share of high-speed internet subscribers served by wholesale-based operators declined steadily since 2019 to 5% in 2023. It also said large facilities-based operators gained more than 450,000 subscribers by acquiring wholesale-based ISPs in 2022 and 2023, while some non-acquired wholesale-based operators lost subscribers (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/policymonitoring/2025/ctmr.htm). The 2026 report said independent wholesale-based operators continued to lose both subscribers and revenue in 2024 (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/policymonitoring/2026/ctmr.htm).

CNOC's April 2026 response to the final fibre rates names the strategic fear directly. It argued that independent market share had fallen from 8.4% in 2020 to 4.2% in 2024 and cited a string of acquisitions by major providers, including Bell buying EBOX and Distributel, TELUS buying Start.ca and Altima Telecom, and Videotron buying VMedia (https://www.cnoc.ca/). CNOC is an advocacy organization, so its framing should be read as a stakeholder position. But the acquisition trend is not imaginary. It is a rational outcome when the value of customer books, brands and local support becomes higher inside a larger facilities-based or bundled operator than as a standalone wholesale-based business.

TekSavvy has not followed that path in the public evidence reviewed here. Its November 2023 release explicitly said it was not currently for sale (https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/teksavvy-urges-crtc-to-deliver-real-price-relief-for-internet-services-for-consumers-in-all-regions-of-canada-860204332.html). Still, the market will keep pricing the possibility because the economics invite it. If rates remain high, an independent may need scale, capital, owned fibre, business services, better automation or a strategic partner. If rates improve, independence becomes more valuable because the brand can retain more of the spread. If incumbents use promotional pricing to compress the retail ceiling, the sale value of the customer base can exceed the standalone earnings value.

For an acquirer, TekSavvy's value would not be only subscribers. It would include regulatory knowledge, a national independent brand, AS5645, IP resources, peering relationships, support routines, address qualification data, customer trust and a history of fighting incumbents. But an acquirer would also ask whether the thing that customers like about TekSavvy survives inside a larger group. Start.ca is a cautionary comparator because TELUS acquired it, and public reviews after that acquisition have included complaints about perceived service decline. That does not prove what would happen to TekSavvy; it shows why "independent" can be a fragile asset once sold.

For TekSavvy, staying independent requires more than legal independence. It requires operational independence in the customer's mind. The customer must see a reason to choose TekSavvy when the national carrier offers a bundle, a gift card, a fibre speed headline and a term discount. The reason can be price, but price alone is easy for a facilities owner to attack. The stronger reason is trust plus enough price discipline. That is why every support failure is strategic, not merely operational.

The Competition Bureau's problem: goldilocks rates in a concentrated market

The Competition Bureau's intervention in the CRTC wholesale framework review is useful because it avoids the fantasy that the policy problem has a clean answer. The Bureau noted that the Canadian broadband industry is unusual because of its wholesale-access regime, and that earlier Bureau research indicated the regime had delivered increased choice and competition. It also recognized concerning trends: wholesale-based competitor subscriptions had peaked in 2019 and then declined, and several significant wholesale-based competitors had been acquired by facilities-based competitors (https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/en/how-we-foster-competition/promotion-and-advocacy/regulatory-adviceinterventions-competition-bureau/intervention-crtc-review-wholesale-high-speed-access-service-framework).

The Bureau's implicit economic problem is a goldilocks rate. Set wholesale access too low and the owner of fibre or cable says investment is discouraged. Set it too high and the wholesale-based competitor cannot discipline retail prices. In Canada, this problem is harder because the same few companies operate large last-mile networks, mobile brands, flanker brands, media or streaming bundles, field-service systems, retail stores and direct-marketing machines. A small independent cannot meet that bundle with pure price unless the wholesale input leaves room.

The CRTC's 2024 policy tried to manage that balance by allowing competitors to use large telephone-company fibre networks, delaying access to newly deployed fibre until 2029, and restricting large ISPs from using wholesale access inside their traditional territories (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2024/2024-180.htm). That structure matters in the West. TELUS is the traditional telephone incumbent in much of Alberta and British Columbia, so the final TELUS access rate is central for competitors. Rogers/Shaw cable remains a separate access path, and cable companies were not required to provide additional wholesale access to their fibre at that time because the CRTC said cable fibre reached only a small share of households. Cable carriers still had to let competitors use cable networks at the highest available speeds.

TekSavvy's western opportunity is therefore partly a regulatory option on the CRTC's balance. If final fibre terms become workable, TekSavvy can offer modern speeds in more western addresses and use its trust brand to win households that dislike incumbents. If the terms are only technically available but economically tight, TekSavvy can list service but struggle to price it aggressively. If incumbent promotions lower the retail ceiling, the option loses value. If customer-support execution is strong, the option gains value because customers stay after the promotional period.

The policy outcome will not be visible in one headline rate. It will show up in address-level availability, porting times, installation success, first-bill accuracy, peak-time congestion, CBB usage, win-back offers, complaint rates and churn after 12 months. For TekSavvy West, those are the real indicators of whether wholesale fibre is a new growth channel or just a regulated access right that is too expensive to exploit fully.

The network is strong enough to matter, but not enough to eliminate dependence

AS5645's public records change the analysis because they show TekSavvy has network depth. PeeringDB's 1-5 Tbps traffic band and exchange list imply real scale (https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1396). Hurricane Electric's prefix list and exchange count show a broad routing footprint (https://bgp.he.net/AS5645). BGP.Tools lists hundreds of peers and dozens of visible prefixes with valid RPKI labels in its table (https://bgp.tools/as/5645). CAIDA AS Rank places AS5645 within a measurable customer cone and global relationship graph (https://asrank.caida.org/asns/5645/as-core). These are not consumer-marketing claims. They are independent internet-routing signals.

The network gives TekSavvy three economic advantages. First, it can manage traffic costs and performance better than a simple white-label reseller. Second, it can speak credibly in regulatory and interconnection disputes because it operates a real network. Third, it can serve technically aware customers who care about routing, peering, IPv6, latency and transparent operations.

But the network cannot replace the local loop. In western residential broadband, the expensive scarcity is still the connection from the network to the home. TekSavvy can peer at YYCIX or VANIX; it cannot repair every Rogers/Shaw coax segment or TELUS fibre drop by itself. It can run an AS with Canadian interconnection; it cannot prevent the access owner from controlling field schedules, network upgrades or some outage information. It can make the retail relationship better; it cannot always make the physical dependency disappear.

That is why the "West" label is important. AS20375 is a public regional identity, yet it appears dormant in global routing observations. AS5645 is the active core. The commercial business is nationwide. The customer experience is local and access-specific. A Vancouver customer does not buy AS5645. A Calgary household does not buy CRTC 2026-77. It buys a bill, a modem, a support number and a promise. The value of the network is hidden until the promise is tested.

For a lender or acquirer, the public network data would support a moderate quality premium, not a blank cheque. It shows real operations, but the diligence must still request transit contracts, exchange port costs, peak-time capacity curves, CBB bills, trouble-ticket flows with access owners, IP address utilization, and support staffing by time zone. The public route record says TekSavvy has something to protect. It does not say how much of each western customer dollar survives after access costs and support.

Customer dependency is the overlooked asset

The best case for TekSavvy West is not that it always has the cheapest plan. It is that some customers want a provider whose incentives feel less hostile. That is a customer-dependency asset. The household depends on internet for work, school, banking, entertainment, home security and family logistics. The small business depends on it for revenue. If the provider is seen as clear and responsive, the customer may stay even when an incumbent flanker brand offers a temporary discount.

Statistics Canada explains why the bill matters. In 2023, Canadian households spent about $87 per month on internet access services, or 1.2% of after-tax monthly expenditures. The lowest income quintile spent $65.58, equal to 1.9% of after-tax monthly expenditures (https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/subjects-start/digital_economy_and_society/telecommunications). On an annual-average basis, consumer prices for internet access services increased 2.9% from 2024 to 2025 while the all-items CPI increased 2.0%, though the internet access price index remained lower than in 2017. This means the political and household stakes are both real. Broadband has become more capable, but the monthly bill remains material.

TekSavvy's trust proposition is strongest with customers who feel that materiality. A household saving $20 a month saves $240 a year. A family that avoids a surprise activation fee or a confusing bundle may value the clarity as much as the nominal saving. A customer who dislikes national-carrier price resets may value a no-term contract. But the same household may leave quickly if the first-year price jumps from $48.95 to $88.95 and the incumbent offers a $70 win-back or a $105 fibre bundle with much higher speed. Trust delays churn; it does not repeal arithmetic.

The customer-dependency anchor also explains why sentiment can change fast. If TekSavvy handles an outage well, the customer may blame the underlying network and stay. If TekSavvy cannot provide information because it is waiting on Rogers or TELUS, the customer may perceive the company as powerless. The independent provider's job is to turn dependence into confidence. That requires clear status pages, honest outage scripts, proactive credits where appropriate, and service representatives who can explain the access boundary without sounding like they are dodging responsibility.

The CRTC's consumer-protection work lowers some formal barriers but increases pressure on execution. If customers can switch more easily and manage plans through app, online or email mechanisms, then providers must compete more often on the actual month-to-month relationship (https://www.canada.ca/en/radio-television-telecommunications/news/2026/04/crtc-takes-action-to-help-canadians-more-easily-manage-their-internet-and-cellphone-plans.html). For TekSavvy, this means the independent brand cannot depend only on regulatory loyalty. It has to keep the bill and support experience clean at the exact point where customers can leave.

What the evidence register says

The central price anchor is CRTC Telecom Order 2026-77, which sets TELUS Alberta/British Columbia FTTP access at $77.21 for 15-1500 Mbps and $81.81 for 1501-5000 Mbps, with CBB at $42.12 per 100 Mbps and defined service charges (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2026/2026-77.htm). This supports the first-order margin analysis.

The retail-price anchors are TekSavvy plan trackers and official TekSavvy offer snippets: WhistleOut's TekSavvy 100 Mbps Unlimited listing at $48.95 for 12 months and $88.95 afterward (https://www.whistleout.ca/Internet/Providers/TekSavvy/Cable/Cable-100-Unlimited), WhistleOut's wider TekSavvy plan table (https://www.whistleout.ca/Internet/teksavvy-internet-plans), PlanGenius's Cable 100 Unlimited (West) listing (https://www.plangenius.ca/internet/best-teksavvy-internet-plans-in-canada-the-complete-guide/), and official TekSavvy fibre offer URLs visible in search at $114.95, $94.95 and $74.95 regular service rates for the top fibre tiers (https://www.teksavvy.com/services/fibre/, https://offers.teksavvy.com/).

The competitor ceiling is represented by TELUS PureFibre 1.5 at a $105 per month offer (https://www.telus.com/en/deals-and-bundles/purefibre-internet-1500) and Rogers Together With Shaw's $110 per month 1 Gigabit term price and $135 reference price (https://rogerstogetherwithshaw.com/). These are not universal address-level offers, but they show the price range customers can compare against.

The regulatory history is supported by CRTC 2019-288 (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2019/2019-288.htm), CRTC 2021-181 (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2021/2021-181.htm), CRTC 2023-358 (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2023/2023-358.htm), CRTC 2024-180 (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2024/2024-180.htm), CRTC 2025-154 (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2025/2025-154.htm), and the Supreme Court leave report from The Wire Report (https://www.thewirereport.ca/2025/03/27/supreme-court-dismisses-teksavvys-wholesale-rates-appeal/).

The market-share and churn context comes from the CRTC 2025 and 2026 telecommunications market reports (https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/policymonitoring/2025/ctmr.htm, https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/policymonitoring/2026/ctmr.htm). The Competition Bureau intervention supplies the competition-policy framing (https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/en/how-we-foster-competition/promotion-and-advocacy/regulatory-adviceinterventions-competition-bureau/intervention-crtc-review-wholesale-high-speed-access-service-framework). CNOC supplies the independent-provider advocacy response to final fibre rates (https://www.cnoc.ca/).

The network evidence is AS20375 in PeeringDB (https://www.peeringdb.com/net/11449), AS20375 in BGP.Tools and Hurricane Electric (https://bgp.tools/as/20375, https://bgp.he.net/AS20375), AS5645 in PeeringDB (https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1396), BGP.Tools and Hurricane Electric (https://bgp.tools/as/5645, https://bgp.he.net/AS5645), and CAIDA AS Rank (https://asrank.caida.org/asns/5645/as-core). The evidence supports a real operating network but also shows that the "West" ASN itself is not the active public backbone visible in current routing views.

The customer-sentiment evidence is Trustpilot, BBB and selected Reddit discussion (https://www.trustpilot.com/review/teksavvy.com, https://ca.trustpilot.com/review/teksavvy.com, https://www.bbb.org/ca/on/chatham/profile/internet-service/teksavvy-solutions-inc-0187-1050879/complaints, https://www.bbb.org/ca/on/chatham/profile/internet-service/teksavvy-solutions-inc-0187-1050879/customer-reviews, https://www.reddit.com/r/teksavvy/comments/1lyb7df/based_on_this_year_2025_alone_would_you_recommend/). These are warning signals, not a measured whole-customer survey.

The household affordability and switching-cost evidence comes from Statistics Canada and CRTC consumer-protection decisions (https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/subjects-start/digital_economy_and_society/telecommunications, https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2026/2026-43.htm, https://www.canada.ca/en/radio-television-telecommunications/news/2026/03/crtc-eliminates-fees-to-make-it-easier-to-switch-internet-and-cellphone-plans.html). These sources support the conclusion that formal switching fees can fall while practical switching risk remains material.

The judgement: asset or spread trade?

TekSavvy West is still an asset where the customer is buying more than access. The evidence supports a company with real network operations, visible interconnection, regulatory competence, a national independent brand and a customer proposition that can matter in a country where telecom bills remain politically and household-sensitive. AS5645 is not a decorative number. The regulatory record is not empty noise. The customer trust story is not invented.

But the same evidence shows why the asset can shrink into a spread trade. The public price stack leaves limited room when western FTTP access begins at $77.21 before capacity and operating costs while incumbents market fibre and cable bundles near the same retail zone. Independent wholesale-based operators have lost market share. Churn is higher for wholesale-based operators than for other provider types in the CRTC's 2025 account. Customer sentiment is mixed enough to make support execution a valuation issue. Switching protections make it easier for customers to leave as well as enter.

The fairest answer is conditional. TekSavvy's independence is an asset if it lowers churn, earns referrals, produces support trust, and uses AS5645's network competence to make the customer experience meaningfully better than the incumbent alternative. It is a regulated spread trade if customers choose only on first-year price and then leave at regular-rate reset, or if last-mile dependence makes support feel powerless. The public evidence cannot resolve that private retention question. It can identify the document that would.

The document is a western gross-margin and churn bridge by access technology. It should show, for each province and plan: retail price, wholesale access cost, capacity cost, installation and service charges, modem cost, support minutes, outage credits, payment failures, complaint escalations, promotional expiry, churn at 30, 90, 180 and 365 days, and win-back losses to Rogers/Shaw, TELUS, Bell or flanker brands. If that bridge shows customers staying at regular rates because they trust TekSavvy, independence is a durable asset. If it shows customers leaving when the discount ends or when an incumbent offer appears, the company is mostly renting a thin regulated spread.

Until that bridge is public, the prudent conclusion is disciplined but not dismissive. TekSavvy West is not merely a small name on someone else's wires. It is part of a real Canadian independent ISP with public network depth and a long regulatory memory. It is also exposed to the arithmetic of wholesale access. In western Canada, the future of the independent ISP is not decided by whether people like the brand. It is decided by whether enough households will keep paying for that brand after the wholesale bill, capacity charge and support cost have already taken their share.