Assessing the Economic Impacts of Copyright Reform on Internet Service Providers
Appendix 3: Data and Methods for Assessing Concentration
Data:
| Canada 89 | ||
|---|---|---|
| ISP | Subscribers | |
| Bell | 1,500,000 | |
| Telus | 670,000 | |
| Shaw | 596,000 | |
| Rogers | 479,000 | |
| Videotron | 284,000 | |
| Alliant | 263,000 | |
| AOL Canada93 | 230,000 | |
| Inter.net Canada94 | 150,000 | |
| Look | 118,000 | |
| Cogeco | 108,000 | |
| SaskTel | 106,000 | |
| MTS | 97,000 | |
| Primus | 60,000 | |
| Other Canadian ISPs | 1,039,000 | |
| US90 | ||
|---|---|---|
| ISP | Subscribers | |
| America Online91 | 32,000,000 | |
| MSN | 9,000,000 | |
| Earthlink | 4,800,000 | |
| United Online92 | 4,800,000 | |
| SBC/Prodigy | 3,700,000 | |
| AT&T Broadband | 1,900,000 | |
| Verizon | 1,600,000 | |
| BellSouth | 1,600,000 | |
| Comcast | 1,300,000 | |
| Cox | 1,300,000 | |
| Charter | 1,100,000 | |
| Cablevision | 680,000 | |
| Adelphia | 550,000 | |
| Quest | 530,000 | |
| RCN | 460,000 | |
| Covad | 360,000 | |
| Hughes | 300,000 | |
| Other US ISPs | 83,000,000 | |
Methods:
In the Canadian market, the top 13 firms account for approximately 4.6 million subscribers out of a total market of 5.7 million.95 In order to estimate the HHI, the remaining subscribers must be distributed across the remaining 927 ISPs.96 Three methods were used to do this, and the HHI was calculated for each. The most realistic approach uses an exponential decay function to distribute the remaining subscribers across smaller ISPs, and results in an HHI of 1105. Alternatives designed to produce the maximum and minimum HHI distributed the remaining subscribers using two other methods. For the maximum, it was assumed that ISPs 14-31 all had the same number of subscribers as ISP 13, and ISPs 33-940 each had one subscriber, and the remainder necessary to total 5.7 million was allocated to ISP 32. This approach produced an unrealistically large HHI of 1115. For the minimum approach, ISPs 14-940 were each assigned the same number of subscribers, chosen as the average number of subscribers required to total 5.7 million. This approach produced an unrealistically small HHI of 1096. Thus, we can be quite confident that the true HHI falls in the range 1096-1115.
For the US market, similar methods were used to distribute the remaining 83 million subscribers across the estimated 9,800 US ISPs.97 The same sensitivity analysis approach produced a range of 532-543, with the exponential estimate being 537.
89 Source: CRTC (2002).
90 Source: ISP Planet, “Top U.S. ISPs by Subscriber: Q3 2002,”
91 Includes subscribers for CompuServe and Road Runner, which are owned by AOL.
92 Includes NetZero and Juno Online.
93 Source: ISP Planet “Top Canadian ISPs by Subscriber”
94 Missing data, interpolated from adjacent values.
95 CRTC (2002)
96 Pollara (2002) identifies 940 ISPs in Canada.
97 The estimate of 9,800 US ISPs comes from CyberAtlas.
