Canadian IP Thought Leaders Series - Dave Dobbin and Toronto Hydro Telecom

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On this week's podcast, I spoke with Dave Dobbin, President of Toronto Hydro Telecom. I've been wanting to do this for a while, as THT has a pretty interesting WiFi offering in Toronto's downtown core. Downtown Toronto has plenty of broadband as it is, but not so much on the WiFi front, and Dave provided some very interesting perspectives on how this is going for them. He shared some of the realities of providing service as well as the usage patterns of the service among different types of subscribers. Dave also made a point of mentioning that THT provides some of the fastest bi-directional WiFi broadband speeds in North America.

More broadly, Dave provided an overview of the events that led up to THT coming into existence, and the rationale behind Toronto Hydro's fiber optic buildout that runs over their power line infrastructure. We also made the distinction between their fiber based capabilities for voice and data service, and broadband over powerline, which instead relies on the power grid for transmission. Dave explained that regulatory issues, more than anything keep them out of the BPL market, and for now, WiFi is their technology of choice for offering broadband services.

You can download the podcast here as well as read more about Dave.


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