Canada infamously has some of the most corrupt and expensive telecom in the entire world. I seriously doubt this article is accurate. It looks like Trudeau is preparing for an election with empty promises.
Yes and no. I worked for Northwestel (division of Bell) which serves Internet (and phone, and TV) for ALL of Yukon, NWT, Nunavut and some of Northern BC.
It has the largest operating area of any Telco on the planet.
In virtually all communities they are the one and only provider.
Yes, it's expensive. Yes, the CRTC is corrupt, and the whole setup is just guaranteed profits to the big telcos. But, you need to think about how hard it is to serve internet to communities of 20-100 people in the Canadian Arctic that don't have roads. There are hundreds of such communities served.
There are weekly outages because of everything from ice build up on the towers at -50C, wind storms blowing down towers, Caribou eating through cables, etc. etc. Most outages require chartering a helicopter and going to the top of mountains 300km from a road or town of noteworthy size.
I figure he is probably trying to take credit for Starlink making decent Internet available to the Rural population of Canada. It was interesting how he let Rogers, Bell and Telus hide under the Umbrella of "Canadian Media Companies" to insure they had no competition from US Carriers under NAFTA 2.0.
I was surprised they even allowed Starlink since it could threaten the potential business Rogers, Bell and Telus could have sometime during the next century.
There's apparently been a massive upsurge in interest in more remote and rural property since the pandemic. As companies become comfortable with WFH due to being forced to try it out, connecting these places will go a long way to allowing Canadians to live in more remote places part and full time and still be connected to work.
There's a lot of struggling 'ghost' towns out there formerly based around resource industries that are no longer viable. This could have a big positive impact in distributing more wealth to more parts of the country instead of having it all centred on Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
Recently Musk/Starlink got approval to operate in direct competition with Telesat. Trudeau who is a strong Crony Politician clearly handing a bunch of money out. Trudeau who will very probably be facing an election shortly and hasn't issued their budget all year.
The federal budget should have been out in March, that got delayed because of covid. They announced it should be out in June. That didn't happen. They announced it would be out in July. That didn't happen. It's now November and there's not even a possible announcement date right now.
The reason the budget isn't out is because it's going to be very bad. The problem with cronyism is that special groups will spend lots of money to get their slice of the pie but the pie isn't going to be big this year. Those special interest groups are going to be angry they didnt get a slice.
Yup. Even in North GTA. Outside town on concession roads? Still expensive LTE or small companies with P2P mobile equivalents that’s junk compared to line broadband.
I can't find my sources for this but I wrote a paper about it in University. The last time something like this was promised (by the previous Harper government), they made most of their progress by redefining "high speed" to be a barely usable speed, something like 3mbps if I remember correctly.
Looks like the CRTC has updated the definition again to be 50mbps down/10mbps up. Not ambitious at all compared to eg. South Korea and some European countries. But it is enough to eg. do video conferencing. So hopefully we can see some real progress. Northern communities experience a horrific digital divide due to their unusable internet speeds.
I've never been to Canada but I've heard tons of stories about low data caps and high overage fees.
I'm on a cheap cell phone plan that toutes that it includes 5G access for no extra charge. It so cool that I can blow through my monthly data allocation in 30 seconds :D
As an outsider I'm not completely sure I understand Canada's vision for it's tech sector.
The plan seems to be to heavily subsidize (and try to extract political credit for) StarLink and SpaceX so that existing rent seeking monopolies can price gouge customers even more. What's interesting is that with regulations around aerospace SpaceX can't and won't hire Canadians. The country effectively went 180 degree backward from the Nortel years when it seemed interested in being a pioneer in network tech to simply being a consumer. Seeing how Nortel didn't protect it's IP again foreign nations, that's probably a good thing that SpaceX doesn't hire Canadians.
This pattern also extends to the rest of what remains of the Canadian aerospace sector. When Trump slapped tariffs later judged to be illegal on the Bombardier CSeries the Trudeau government simply... looked away and did nothing, allowing Airbus to swoop in and grab the plane and it's IP. Again, Canada will handle some assembly while engineering moves to Europe.
Are these measures... popular with the Canadian public? Help me understand here.
God no, we Canadians all know we are being gouged on telecom prices. Both internet and mobility. We have the CRTC (Canadian radio-television telecom commission) which is supposed to protect the public interest, however they do a piss poor job of even trying to cast themselves in that light.
There are like 3 companies that control the internet oligarchy. They used the government backed fibre expansion subsidies to build out infrastructure, then claim that magically made everything more expensive.
Our telecom is required to be all Canadian companies, but all their customer service is farmed out to India or other similar region call center's.
We pay through the nose of asymmetric internet speeds. I hope starlink and other factors push for a price revolt.
>Trudeau today announced his government's plan to launch a $1.75-billion universal broadband fund to build infrastructure across the country, mainly in rural and remote communities
how is this going to be distributed? if this is given to the incumbent telecom, what safeguards are there to prevent them from pocketing the money and not delivering?
Forgive my ignorance, what speed internet do 98% of Canadians have currently?
Is this a speed bump or a no internet vs internet scenario?
Those are two very different propositions.
If it's access to the internet, that's a great idea. If it's a speed bump - I'm not interested in paying for someone else's luxury. If you want luxury - go ahead and purchase it.
Also, if we're going to government sponsor access to High-speed internet, we should convert internet service providers to a government service as well.
How does it make sense for tax payers to pay for internet service hardware and have corporations come in and make profit off of it?
1) Canada's "most expensive telecom in the world" comes up a lot.
While this is somewhat true, internet/cell phones are expensive here, what people seem to forget is the number of customers and the land mass. You cant take Phone costs in Ontario (Population 14.57 million, area 1.076 million km²) and compare that to California (Population 39.51 million, area 423,970 km²) and think you will pay the same rates.
Yes, most of Ontario is close to the border, and in cities, but your cell phone works over a massive area and you pay for this.
2) Canadian government pledges to connect 98% of Canadians via High-Speed Internet
This is the liberals, and probably gettiing ready for elections so they promise the world but history shows they also wont deliver on it.
- Ontario Wynne pledges to lower insurance rates (this becomes a "stretch goal")
- Trudeua pledges electoral reform (nope, never took place).
- Ontario Liberals move to ban two-tier health care (2003)
How long do you think Trudeau's wife waited for her COVID treatment? Do you think she was she treated in a hallway like other Canadians?
I always see these numbers thrown around and I assume they fit the narrative that most lobbyist want to push but here's what's pulled under the rug is: Density distribution, ie, how many square miles to cover 50%, 75% or 99% of the population.
Sure, maybe Ontario has twice the size, roughly, of California. But I doubt the northern parts get any cell coverage.
[+] [-] shiado|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grecy|5 years ago|reply
It has the largest operating area of any Telco on the planet.
In virtually all communities they are the one and only provider.
Yes, it's expensive. Yes, the CRTC is corrupt, and the whole setup is just guaranteed profits to the big telcos. But, you need to think about how hard it is to serve internet to communities of 20-100 people in the Canadian Arctic that don't have roads. There are hundreds of such communities served.
There are weekly outages because of everything from ice build up on the towers at -50C, wind storms blowing down towers, Caribou eating through cables, etc. etc. Most outages require chartering a helicopter and going to the top of mountains 300km from a road or town of noteworthy size.
Canada is BIG and the Arctic is REMOTE.
[+] [-] hourislate|5 years ago|reply
I was surprised they even allowed Starlink since it could threaten the potential business Rogers, Bell and Telus could have sometime during the next century.
[+] [-] bioinformatics|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DudeInBasement|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afterburner|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|5 years ago|reply
There's a lot of struggling 'ghost' towns out there formerly based around resource industries that are no longer viable. This could have a big positive impact in distributing more wealth to more parts of the country instead of having it all centred on Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
[+] [-] sleepysysadmin|5 years ago|reply
The federal budget should have been out in March, that got delayed because of covid. They announced it should be out in June. That didn't happen. They announced it would be out in July. That didn't happen. It's now November and there's not even a possible announcement date right now.
The reason the budget isn't out is because it's going to be very bad. The problem with cronyism is that special groups will spend lots of money to get their slice of the pie but the pie isn't going to be big this year. Those special interest groups are going to be angry they didnt get a slice.
[+] [-] KMnO4|5 years ago|reply
I'm less than 5 minutes to a city with fibre, yet my geography makes it impossible to get anything other than satellite internet ($100/40gb).
[+] [-] bnix|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scoundreller|5 years ago|reply
You just need to make friends with the landowners at the tops of the mountains.
[+] [-] eddywebs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spollo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Simulacra|5 years ago|reply
Fast promises on slow internet in the North (August 31, 2015) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/fast-promises-on-slow-i...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/red-tape-slowing-sprea...
[+] [-] Scoundreller|5 years ago|reply
Giving telecoms money for infrastructure with no strings attached seems like a bad idea.
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|5 years ago|reply
US is loaded with lessons like this that no one wants to learn from.
eg: Bell's (later Verizon's) broken 1993 promise to deploy fiber @ 45Mbps across Pennsylvania, that netted the corp billions in subsidies
eg: Anything at all with the words Frontier & West Virginia
[+] [-] jdofaz|5 years ago|reply
I'm on a cheap cell phone plan that toutes that it includes 5G access for no extra charge. It so cool that I can blow through my monthly data allocation in 30 seconds :D
[+] [-] jacobmarble|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cobookman|5 years ago|reply
Say there's 10,000 of these in space, that's 200,000Gibps or 195Tibps.
I don't think that's enough bandwidth for high speed internet for hundreds of millions of customers.
However I suspect it'll be cheaper and faster for sparsley populated areas. With Urban areas still leveraging physical wires.
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ezez|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 908B64B197|5 years ago|reply
The plan seems to be to heavily subsidize (and try to extract political credit for) StarLink and SpaceX so that existing rent seeking monopolies can price gouge customers even more. What's interesting is that with regulations around aerospace SpaceX can't and won't hire Canadians. The country effectively went 180 degree backward from the Nortel years when it seemed interested in being a pioneer in network tech to simply being a consumer. Seeing how Nortel didn't protect it's IP again foreign nations, that's probably a good thing that SpaceX doesn't hire Canadians.
This pattern also extends to the rest of what remains of the Canadian aerospace sector. When Trump slapped tariffs later judged to be illegal on the Bombardier CSeries the Trudeau government simply... looked away and did nothing, allowing Airbus to swoop in and grab the plane and it's IP. Again, Canada will handle some assembly while engineering moves to Europe.
Are these measures... popular with the Canadian public? Help me understand here.
[+] [-] Topgamer7|5 years ago|reply
There are like 3 companies that control the internet oligarchy. They used the government backed fibre expansion subsidies to build out infrastructure, then claim that magically made everything more expensive.
Our telecom is required to be all Canadian companies, but all their customer service is farmed out to India or other similar region call center's.
We pay through the nose of asymmetric internet speeds. I hope starlink and other factors push for a price revolt.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gruez|5 years ago|reply
how is this going to be distributed? if this is given to the incumbent telecom, what safeguards are there to prevent them from pocketing the money and not delivering?
[+] [-] jeromegv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexashka|5 years ago|reply
Is this a speed bump or a no internet vs internet scenario?
Those are two very different propositions.
If it's access to the internet, that's a great idea. If it's a speed bump - I'm not interested in paying for someone else's luxury. If you want luxury - go ahead and purchase it.
Also, if we're going to government sponsor access to High-speed internet, we should convert internet service providers to a government service as well.
How does it make sense for tax payers to pay for internet service hardware and have corporations come in and make profit off of it?
[+] [-] aDfbrtVt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 908B64B197|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lupinglade|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magwa101|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] _ajrz|5 years ago|reply
1) Canada's "most expensive telecom in the world" comes up a lot.
While this is somewhat true, internet/cell phones are expensive here, what people seem to forget is the number of customers and the land mass. You cant take Phone costs in Ontario (Population 14.57 million, area 1.076 million km²) and compare that to California (Population 39.51 million, area 423,970 km²) and think you will pay the same rates.
Yes, most of Ontario is close to the border, and in cities, but your cell phone works over a massive area and you pay for this.
2) Canadian government pledges to connect 98% of Canadians via High-Speed Internet
This is the liberals, and probably gettiing ready for elections so they promise the world but history shows they also wont deliver on it.
- Ontario Wynne pledges to lower insurance rates (this becomes a "stretch goal") - Trudeua pledges electoral reform (nope, never took place).
- Ontario Liberals move to ban two-tier health care (2003) How long do you think Trudeau's wife waited for her COVID treatment? Do you think she was she treated in a hallway like other Canadians?
[+] [-] 908B64B197|5 years ago|reply
Sure, maybe Ontario has twice the size, roughly, of California. But I doubt the northern parts get any cell coverage.