The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday, Aug. 6, edition that Ottawa must decide whether to support a diverse, competitive Internet ecosystem, including regional ISPs that invest where larger providers do not. The Globe's guest columnist Nathan Simington writes that if the answer is yes, action is needed before Aug. 13 to reverse recent Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission policy. No effective competition policy benefits dominant incumbents, be it in the U.S., Europe or Canada. Independent and regional ISPs face threats not from market forces, but from the unintended consequences of regulation. A recent CRTC decision mandating wholesale access to broadband networks could undermine competition by allowing Canada's Big Three incumbents -- Rogers Communications, BCE's Bell and Telus -- to access each other's networks, as well as those built by smaller regional ISPs often in areas the major carriers chose not to serve. Wholesale access was meant to let smaller firms use incumbent infrastructure. It was never meant to let Canada's Big Three piggyback on the existing infrastructure of others, especially the hard-won investments of smaller, more localized competitors.