Rogers Cablesystems said that initially 200,000 homes in Canada will have access to 'Wave' as the service is known that has been in pilot test since November 1995 with 750 subscribers in Newmarket, Onatrio. By the end of 1997, an additional a million and a half households will also be able to order the service.

For a one year contract at C$55 a month and an installation fee of C$150, Rogers will rent you a cable modem, an Ethernet card and other hardware to hook up to the Wave service. You will have unlimited access to the Internet, up to 5 e-mail accounts and a home page with 5 megabytes of storage.

Shaw Cable, a smaller outfit is also introducing its own cable modem service which will be available to more than half a million homes by the fall of 1997. Both Rogers and Shaw have indicated that they have committed large sums (tens of millions of dollars in Rogers' case) to upgrade their downstream-only cable infrastructure to handle the two way communication mode required for interactive Internet services.

It looks like that 1997 will be a banner year for the speedy Internet access market which in Canada, the cable guys are casting the first stone to start the race. As in the words of Ted Rogers, president of Rogers Cablesystems, "In one leap forward, the cable industry has become a major player in the Internet". The phone companies and the independent Internet service providers (ISPs) will have to react.

Actually, the telephone company have their Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) technology waiting in the wing to combat the cable modem onslaught. Although the current generation of ADSL modems are faster than cable modems, both the cableco and teleco will be hard at work to improve their gears.

As for the ISPs, they may have to modify their business model or forge an alliance with other partners to create new markets and to compete. The heat is certainly on.

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