Many thanks to those who answered my question, which was essentially,
The consensus of the answers was "Probably!"
As Geoffrey Walsh wrote about the financial side, I will comment on that.
I'm not anxious to get cable service from Rogers. Partly because I still remember their negative option billing fiasco (they increased rates for supplying extra TV channels unless you opted out). Partly because of local dissatisfaction with their unilateral bandwidth capping and the dropping of newsgroups. Mainly because I don't have cable TV, so I either have to add that or pay a surcharge for cable internet without TV.
However I am a Bell Canada customer. Apparently all DSL service in Ottawa is provided by Bell Nexxia. This is wholesaled off to various ISPs who sell it as part of various plans. Bell Sympatico, the ISP branch of Bell, include 24/7 help desk, MSN, and various features and rent modems. Freenet, a non-profit community ISP, sells DSL at a lower markup but with fewer features. Troubleshooting is done by volunteers or through online discussion groups (I've lived with that for 12 years on dialup). Static IP service is available for a small surcharge. Users may supply their own DSL modems. However Freenet sell the Speedtouch 516 (for single port ethernet) or Speedtouch 585 (4 ports + wireless). The advantage of these is that they are supplied configured for Freenet, and the volunteers are familiar with them if there are problems.