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Hmm. Prices have come down on the highest speed links from SaskTel. You can now get 25 megabit downloads for $80/month. http://sasktel.com/search/controller/_/Tab-4294966321/Ntk-Main_Search_Interface/Ntt-high-speed-internet-personal

The parent AC is mostly incorrect. The major telecoms only emphasise post-paid plans, but do have pre-paid available without the need to purchase a phone. They don't want to sell them to you however, and will only tell you about pre-paid if you visit their website or ask them specifically.

In Canada there a dozen or so MVNO's, most of whom operate on a pre-paid model in addition to the 'big three' incumbent companies. Each of the 'big three' providers (Rogers, Bell, Telus) owns one or two MVNO's. Rogers has Fido and Chatr, Bell has Virgin and Telus has Koodo. There are also several highly regional carriers (SaskTel, MTS, Lynx, TBayTel, ICE Wireless, etc.) that offer services where the 'Big 3' do not operate (Northern Quebec, Northwest Territories, Northern Ontario, etc.).

All that being said, there is only one major GSM network, the Rogers/Fido network. Thus, (until 2008/2009) only Rogers/Fido were offering pre-paid plans you could use with a GSM phone. Telus and Bell were CDMA. In the last few years Telus and Bell have built their own HSPA+ network. Now that they have a network that takes SIM cards, all three of the major players are offering inexpensive pre-paid SIM cards, with fairly expensive per-minute rates (40c/minute, unless you get a pre-paid 'plan'. Some of the plans are even 'free' if you top up frequently enough).

Further muddying the waters is the fact that most of the MVNOs don't specialise in pre-paid 'long distance' rates or pre-paid 'local' rates. Part of this is because of foreign ownership restrictions. These have been recently eased, but are still tighter than most other countries. Canada is also extremely large, with a small population. Canada is the size of Europe, with 10x fewer people. England, is approximately the same size as Southern Ontario (130,000km^2), but England has 50,000,000 people and Southern Ontario has 12,000,000. Let us not forget that a large part is because the owners of the networks don't want to give anyone a better deal than they give their own customers, at least not appreciably.

All that being said, the 'big three' all offer prepaid SIMs for $10-$20 dollars, so do most of their sub brands. The MVNOs Petro-Canada Mobility and 7-11 'Speak out' wireless are reasonably easy to find and offer prepaid services depending on where you are visiting.

Rogers Wireless - http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-products/plans#,Tabset1--4
Telus Mobility - http://www.telusmobility.com/en/ON/prepaid/rate-plans.shtml
Bell Mobility - http://www.bell.ca/Mobility/Cell_phone_plans/Prepaid_plans

Big three 'sub brands' (frequently with regional restrictions ie: major cities):
Virgin Mobile - Bell Mobility - http://www.virginmobile.ca/en/plans/prepaid-talktext-plans.html?itcid=NAV:58
Koodo - Telus Mobility - http://koodomobile.com/en/on/plansandboosters.shtml
Fido - Rogers Wireless - http://www.fido.ca/web/page/portal/Fido/PrepaidPlans?forwardTo=prepaidPlans
Chatr - Rogers Wireless - http://www.chatrwireless.com/web/chatr.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PlanBrowse

Regional Operators:
Sasktel - http://www.sasktel.com/personal/mobility/prepaid/index.html
MTS - http://www.mts.ca/mts/personal/wireless/mts+prepaid+wireless ... etc.

Independent MVNOs:
Petro Canada Mobility - (Rogers Network) -

Site says 200/40. The September announcement about them starting with the UofR says gigabit down (unspecified upstream) "by the end of this decade".

They don't make gold digital watches.

That's always frustrated me. I would love to wear a classy-looking (ladies) watch, but they don't make them with digital displays! Why on earth not?

Ever since I got my first digital watch as a kid, I've never looked back. Now I'd be hard pressed to find a digital watch that doesn't show me time in 24-hour format, show me the month/day/year, show me time in different time zones, allow me to set multiple alarms or chime on the hour or converts to a stopwatch if I ever need it (okay, I rarely use that, but it's handy when I do need it)...what's the benefit to analog watches again? You can replace the numbers on the dial with chips of diamond to mess people up even more, and call it 'high end'?

So I wear something like this clunky looking thing, which may not be bling, but at least it's got the bells and whistles I want. I just long for something a bit prettier for everyday wear...without sacrificing efficiency and (many) features, that is.

Majority of Saskatchewan (~90% of population):
- 5Mbps @ $30/month, no cap
- 25Mbps @ $65/month, no cap

It's not really a big deal. I have a 10Mbps DSL connection with no cap for $40 a month from SaskTel. They actually offer connections up to 25Mbps (DSL, I kid you not), but they cost nearly $100 a month. Still though, no caps. VDSL

Just a reminder that any business that does not have profit as their sole purpose will not stay in business very long.

To counter, allow me to introduce you to the Crown Corporations of Canada, specifically SaskTel.

SaskTel has been in business since June 12, 1908. By the charter which governs its operations it exists for the sole purpose of providing telecommunications to the people of the province of Saskatchewan. Not profit. Not shareholders. But service, for the people of the province.

In 1984 SaskTel completed the world's longest commercial fibre optic system: 3,268 kilometres.
In 1988 SaskTel developed the first fibre/coaxial hybrid network with pick-and-play Video-On-Demand.
In 2002 SaskTel was the first to commercially deploy Internet Protocol video over DSL.
etc etc

All with a customer base of 1,000,000 people.

Yeah, evil socialistic Canadian enterprise, I know...

You could go to Virgin Mobile for Saskatchewan coverage if you want to completely ditch Telus. They run off Sasktel's network.

Though that should be moot soon as Sasktel finally seems to be getting with the times and rolling out UMTS/HSPA.

cell phone coverage in rural Canada is a joke.

I didn't refute that point specifically, but here you go, its not a joke: http://www.sasktel.com/personal/mobility/coverage/coverage.html

In fact, telecommunications outside the few large cities that Canada has is limited to the most basic of service levels.

So do you consider 958 people to be a large Canadian city?

• Our landline switches have access points for third party long distance switches interconnecting with ours. This allows for long distance competition.
  
  
• Our landline switches also have access points for third party telephone company switches, for example Shaw has telephone service in my city. Rogers and SaskTel mobility also provice local service.
  
  
• Although we don't have any, third party unbundled loop CLECs are allowed to lease space in our COs to directly provice traditional copper based services like phone or DSL from their own equipment.
  
  
• Our IP core network allows for multiple backhauls onto the internet, so you can lease DSL ports from SaskTel and use your own internet connection for the backhaul. If you're a SaskTel DSL customer you get SaskTel's default backhaul.
  
  

It's a regional ILEC, so you probably can't get service from us. SaskTel

Rogers throttles the shit out of the connection, imposes monthly bandwidth caps, and won't sell me service with a static address or the ability to run "servers". Gibbled service from Rogers costs about the same as cable in the US.

Bell has monthly bandwidth caps, and I get frequent disconnects and piss poor sync rates because even though I'm in a residential area of a half million person area (Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge) that they say will get 3-5Mbps I'm 6.2km wire distance from the CO that's 3km away. It took 3 months for them to figure out that my connection blows because of the wire distance. Bell will give me an unstable piece of shit line with static address and ability to run servers for $99/month. Other DSL providers use the same copper, and so provide an unstable piece of shit line, for around $30/month.

To my knowledge, my connection runs to the station here, then to Regina, SK. I live in Moose Jaw. I've never had any drag or downtime since I moved into my latest apartment. I've only been here about 7 months now, though. Still, so far it's been great!
Anywho... just my input. :-)

SaskTel offeres HDTV over their IPTV service, Max.

It wouldn't surprise me if AT&T can do that too.

(disclaimer: I work for SaskTel).
SaskTel does DTV over phone lines. In fact I'm at work troubleshooting them right now. Or not troubleshooting; it's fairly quiet since they are working well. Phone lines are definitely capable of HD, if the lines are fairly well taken care of.

like SaskTel?

maybe you can help, since you seem versed in the topic;

Since I started at my current job, I haven't really done anything other than go to work, work, come home, eat, sleep, wake up, go to work, work...etc. Occasionally I do chores, and in the off chances that I have spare time I read vector calculus textbooks; but...this isn't something that I can really talk about with other people, and work, well, I signed an agreement essentially agreeing to disclose nothing that happens to me from the time I start work until the time I leave to go home;

So I come across friends and...find I'm unable to remember anything that's happened to me, or that I know of that's worth talking about...I haven't really been exposed to anything like that since January. I went for Japanese food two weeks ago. That's about the most interesting thing that I could talk about since then. Normally I'm fairly talkative, but my canned responses are getting old, and I'm not replenishing what I would normally talk about with anything, since everything I deal with day to day is under a shroud of secrecy, I have really nothing to talk about. What makes matters worse is my memory capacity is getting worse and worse with every year and I am having a hard time remembering things that I really should know, nevermind anything particularly relevant.

Maybe the solution is 'do less Calculus', but it's the only non-work productive thing that I'm doing, and the only one that makes sense to me since I'm still a student?

I know I know, asking for advice on /. is probably not a good idea, but hey someone's probably experienced this...(either that or my mind is finished as a thinking/remembering instrument since I'm having so much trouble trying to remember things that happened 4 months ago or more in detail enough to talk about them; I used to pride myself that since I took close notes of my dreams that at any point, either awake or asleep, that I could stop and ask myself; where am I and how did I get here? Just before now I was doing *[x+0], before that I was doing *[x-1], before that *[x-2]..)

... of your ISP expanding over to North America? -- especially in Saskatchewan, Canada. Our current offerings are very limited.

Pretty please?

This is old news to Canadians. I have had IPTV for a few years now and I like it. It is more than just TV it's got video on demand, internet, email and games. Other nice thing are interactive weather forecasts and local news. And there is no "buffering". The only thing that is annoying is that the menus load kind of like a website. All the text appears and the graphics follow a few seconds later. My provider Sasktel came and installed a free wireless router and wired every room with CAT5 jacks for free. What more could you ask for?

In Saskatchewan anyway, MaxTV is a Digital Subscriber Line TV service offered by Sasktel. I don't know if caller display on the TV works for any Max customer who pays $4+$3.80 a month for name and number display on their phone bill, or if they charge another $3.80ish fee for that. I don't know if the on screen display of the phone number would be recorded on a VHS recording, I'd guess it would, so I'd like to have the ability to turn the feature off, or on at my command.

http://www.sasktel.com/ will tell you more about the service.

Canada recently made an improvment in political funding: every vote translates into a set dollar amount given to that party from the Elections Canada pot. This means that 3rd parties can get funding to compete in the next election, at least in theory.

http://www.communitynet.ca/
http://www.sasktel.com/about_sasktel/news_room/200 4_news_releases/sasktel_announces_communitynet_dep loyment_schedule.html
Are two links that are on topic to a provincial government/corporation providing access to wireless internet over a wide area.

Sasktel Max

Move to Saskatchewan:
http://www.sasktel.com/about_sasktel/news_room/200 4_news_releases/sasktel_announces_communitynet_dep loyment_schedule.html
With the spread of Community Net II wireless land based line-of-sight internet access in rural Saskatchewan, I wonder how long until more communities set up their own podcasts here. All I'm aware of so far is an independent TV station out of Indian Head, SK. I'll try to look it up and give a link for that later.

I work for Sasktel (incumbent Telco in Saskatchewan - smack dab in the middle of canada for the geographically challenged) and we've had wireless internet services going for the better part of a year now.

We're part of the 'Bell Wireless Alliance' which is a resource/competition sharing agreement between Bell, Sasktel, Aliant, MTS and most of the other CDMA cellular carriers (excluding Telus) - and yet Bell always seems to trump Sasktel where new technology is concerned.

First company to roll out DSL in Canada - Sasktel. Who got credit? Bell.

First company to have broadband/dsl television services in Canada - Sasktel. Who gets credit, Bell and a handful of US carriers who are still working on it.

First company to have MTC wiress broadband in Canada - you guessed it, Sasktel. Who gets credit - Bell and Rogers.

An example of this service can be found here https://commerce.sasktel.com/esales/start.swe?SWER owId=1-4NP&SWEField=s_2_2_24_1&SWERowIds=SWERowId0 %3D1-4NP&SWETVI=&SWEApplet=Product+Catalog+List+Ap plet+(eSales)&SWEView=Product+Catalog+View+(eSales )&SWEDIC=false&SWETargetView=&SWEVI=&SWENeedContex t=true&SWETA=&SWETS=&SWEContainer=&SWECmd=InvokeMe thod&SWEReqRowId=1&SWESP=false&SWESPa=&SWEPOC=&SWE BID=-1&SWEC=5&SWEM=&SWEMethod=Drilldown&SWETS=1092 677920239&SMIDENTITY=NO/ . It's basically the final step to getting broadband internet services to every single populated square inch of the province (Sitting at 70-80% currently with just regular copper and fibre - the wireless is to bridge the final remote areas).

[/rant]

My ISP, Sasktel in Saskatchewan, Canada has recently implemented a spam filtering service that has so far resulted in 2 false positives and no delivered spam. It completely blocks all virused emails as well. Finally, it sends out an email every once in a while to remind me to check the status of spam at the online message centre, where you can look at all email sent to me that is "suspicious."

They also have a fairly comprehensive policy against hosting spammers, which is nice to hear. I know that many of my friends who use other ISPs have been recently flooded with spam, but I've not had any problems thus far. It's nice to have an ISP that cares about its customers!

I'd love to see someone come in and replace the PSTN with QOS'd IP lines.

Which would do precicely nothing to break monopolies.

Last mile services (phone, cable, network, gas, electric, etc) are natural monopolies; it's most efficient for there to be a single supplier. The two ways to circumvent the detremental effects of these monopolies are:

• Strong regulation, either govermentally or via Citizens Utility Boards, and/or
• Ownership by the customers, either by nationalizing the companies (assuming the government is democratic and open) or through Customer Co-Operatives.

Replacing one capitalist natural monopoly with annother will not of itself improve matters.

Yes. I first heard this when I got my ADSL in January 1997. Back then I heard they were just doing high-speed internet as a test to see if they could actually deliver TV. Well, they have it here, now:

Sasktel (Follow any of the "MAX" links.)

I still work for Alcatel (former iMagicTV). Sasktel has a large customer base and has been up and running for years now. This is certainly not news to us in Saint John :)

http://www.sasktel.com/ Is the proper link.

As well Sasktel offers movies on demand via this service. I can pause, stop, rewind, and watch the show over and over again in a 24 hour period with every rental. Its actually pretty incredible I hope that other providers pickup similar functionality soon.

So, how well are we covered for broadband? DSL is available in over two hundred communities. (sasktel.com -> Internet services -> High Speed Internet -> click on "communities" in the "High Speed Basic Internet" section. Direct linking to the list doesn't work.)

The "density" argument still doesn't wash.

What I understand, freedom of expression is guaranteed in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights
"Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression ; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of fronteirs."
[emphasis added]. So if there is any nation that is not a part of the United Nations, sure, imposing these restrictions on the freedom of the government of these nations would be imposing their own beliefs on these other cultures. This does not sound like what these people are doing, however. There is no excuse whatsoever for government censorship by any government who is a member of the United Nations(this means you, China, United States of America, and Canada).

Sure, one may argue that the United Nations may be unnecessary, outdated, completely irrelevent or otherwise, but as it stands today, we are obligated to fufil our part of the bargain, despite how sometimes we may disagree with it, or alternatively, decline membership to the United Nations and become a Rogue State, with none of the protections to you that The Declaration provides.

These guys sound down-right nuts, though. If a dictator is willing to kill thousands of his own people, what makes you think they won't assasinate you, if you actively mess with them? Kudos to their efforts.

We also have one of the top employers in Canada for several years running Sasktel (Where I start work in just under two weeks!!!)

really? i'd love to know of one. locally i think i have access to two. the first is my university, and only because i'm a student, for 20$/month (30$/month phone line=50$/month. plus added bonus if i were to say something online or host something on my home computer they don't agree of i can be expelled. joy.) or i can go with SaskTel for 50$/month (30$/month phone line=80$/month).
that's it. I'm in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, on Highspeed Cable (27$/month total) because it's the cheapest available. on the other hand i AM interested in switching to an ISP, dialup (>=3000Baud) or otherwise, if they do not have such a fscked up EULA/Lisence Agreement. even at the same price. so where are these 'dime a dozen isps'? i'm pretty sure sasktel drove the all out by now. but i'm interested in knowing whatever it is that you know here, even if it's solely that there are still places in the world where theres' actually competition and thus at least at somewhere descent isp service.

I think the CRTC's decision is a bad one. In my area, the telco is a Crown Corporation, which is owned by the people(SaskTel). We paid the money to lay the telecommunications infrastructure via taxes, and cost of service, and now some other company can come, and capitalize on our expenditures. This is ludicrous. If the CRTC was truly all for competition, it would allow our television over DSL (SaskTel MAX to be packaged separate from the broadband internet service. They would also force cable companies such as Shaw Cable and Rogers Cable to open up their broadband infrastructure to competing cable companies. Broadband prices are a drop in the bucket in Canada compared to other parts of the world, including some areas of the United States, where a 384kbit/s connection costs someone as much or more than a 3mbit/s DSL connection would cost me here in Canada. ($99CDN/mo), or a 2mbit/s DSL connection ($60CDN/mo).

I think the CRTC's decision is a bad one. In my area, the telco is a Crown Corporation, which is owned by the people(SaskTel). We paid the money to lay the telecommunications infrastructure via taxes, and cost of service, and now some other company can come, and capitalize on our expenditures. This is ludicrous. If the CRTC was truly all for competition, it would allow our television over DSL (SaskTel MAX to be packaged separate from the broadband internet service. They would also force cable companies such as Shaw Cable and Rogers Cable to open up their broadband infrastructure to competing cable companies. Broadband prices are a drop in the bucket in Canada compared to other parts of the world, including some areas of the United States, where a 384kbit/s connection costs someone as much or more than a 3mbit/s DSL connection would cost me here in Canada. ($99CDN/mo), or a 2mbit/s DSL connection ($60CDN/mo).

I live in Saskatchewan, a Canadian province with a Crown owned telephone company called Sasktel. Their service is excellent, and cheap. So good and cheap, I don't know or care if others can't use their lines which they paid for. They have the largest fibre optic cabling network in the world.

Compare to when I lived in Calgary, in Alberta, with a private phone company called Telus, whose service was terrible. Cut off the phone with no notice for not paying a bill, that they were supposed to charge to the credit card every month, but neglected to do, 18 months after the fact. Then demanding 2 months service fee to get it activated again. Ick.

Anyhoo, that's the story. Crown in Saskachewan > Private in Alberta.

Yea, but Saskatchewan has ~1 Million people concentrated in 251,865mi^2 or 652,327km^2. Not very dense.

It has a telephone company^Wmonopoly called SaskTel, which was the firt DSL provider in North America. "It is now available in 158 cities and towns across the province - and will reach 237 communities by the end of 2003"

Check it out here Apparently it was also the first in the world to release 3G mobile networking. It also built the largest fibre optic cabling network in the world. Don't know if that still holds though.

there are many many people who would love the hardware you use right now. Mabye it won't be state of the art any more...who cares? imagine all the stuff that you are using it for - - at last us below-the-poverty-line may be able to do those things too... I'm pretty damn happy using djgpp, IE 3.0, 1-2-3, and a whole whack of programs instead of having to use DOSSHELL, EDIT, and and the like... don't just toss your old computer parts, if there is anything to salvage, salvage it and give it to groups such as Sasktel Pioneers, or whoever it is that locally distributes computers to those who can't get them when they are straight out of the box... just as people 10 years from now will be tossing computers that can't do real-time, surrealistic fractal VR ... there is no excuse to throw any computer out, unless there is something seriously wrong with it. stupidity is not an excuse, either.

hell SETI needs processing power, even...

:)
Gotta love socialist governments!
Always thinking ahead

Grenfel is a town of 1000, 80 miles from Regina, just 15 miles away from my hometown of Broadview.

Poor Americans. Must be frustrating - and looking at how much they're arguing, it seems they've got absolutely no clue as to what to do about it.

.

Wireless Cable
Image Wireless

Telco Delivered TV/Internet (not VoD, though)
SaskTel Max

Regular Cable TV/Internet
Shaw Cablesystems

Satellite TV
StarChoice
ExpressVu

SaskTel has the service available in Saskatoon and Regina right now, here in Saskatchewan Canada... MTS is doing pretty much exactly the same thing SaskTel, but they're a year to two years behind SaskTel, because they started later...

Sasktel (the first ADSL provider in North America) has had this for a while.

High speed basic(1.5M, 128k up): $45.99/month
High speed light(128K): $22.95/month
High speed static IP(Basic+Static IP): $59.99/month
High speed enhanced (2.0M down, 384k up): $59.95/month
High speed Extra (3.0M down, 640k up): $95.95/month, $149.95/month.

Personally, I use Shaw's cable modem service, but if I want a static IP and 3mb down, I know where I can get it for $150/month :)

SaskTel, the provincial Crown phone monopoly in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, is investing CDN$80 million into starting a subsiduary that will provide broadband service to Newcastle, NSW, Australia.

See the link here. It's skimpy on details, but it's real broadband. Take it from a SaskTel customer, they're good ($22/month, unlimited (128k) DSL to $100/month for unlimited (3m) DSL)

SaskTel, the provincial Crown phone monopoly in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, is investing CDN$80 million into starting a subsiduary that will provide broadband service to Newcastle, NSW, Australia.

See the link here. It's skimpy on details, but it's real broadband. Take it from a SaskTel customer, they're good ($22/month, unlimited (128k) DSL to $100/month for unlimited (3m) DSL)

I have a fantastic DSL provider. My service gets 640Kbs upload and up to 3Mbs download. When I run tests at places like dslreports I see close to 2Mbs download and the full 640Kbs upload all the time. I also get two fixed IP addresses and a bunch of other useless stuff including 5 hrs monthly of dial up. (I was a dial up customer of theirs and NEVER got a busy signal.) It's a little pricey at $150 Cdn but it is considered a business service.

You can see what they offer here. SaskTel

I know several people who switched to cable when it arrived here and only lasted a couple of months before switching back. The cable had better download rates (than the basic DSL) but was regularly down (0 Kbs up or down).

The population of Canadian provinces is too spread out for the Telcos to make this happen (with the exception of Ontario). 1 million people in Saskatchewan, ~50% of them in rural areas, covering the same area as your average 5 states and the infrastructure required will cripple a provincial Telco/Cable Company. Most of them are loosing money on the current $40-50 ADSL/Cable Modem package as it is. The odds of Pangman getting High Speed anytime soon is very unlikely.

And for those weird 'I want more than basic service' rants, man, get a grip. Our telephone service is already a 'essential service', and you can get every freekin option you've could ever dream of on your phone (can anyone say 'worlds largest fibre optic network'?). For an example Highspeed offering, take a look here.


"What do I care, if life ain't fair,
If you look at me real sore.
I've paid my dues and you should too,

Here in regina, sask. We have had ADSL since 1996, they say the first in North america...We also have Cable and wireless here. Also RADSL. check it out.. http://www.sasktel.com/speed/main_no flash.html

I was baffled when I saw that SaskTel was charging an extra $50 (CDN) per month for static IP with ADSL, while CableRegina will hand out multiple (I've heard up to four, don't quote me) static IPs for cable modem customers. That adds insult to injury when cable is $49.95 a month (CDN) while ADSL is $59.95 ($79.95 if you're not a SaskTel long distance customer).

I rarely notice speed differences on the cable modem at 'peak times', except perhaps when downloading large files I may drop 5-10kbytes / sec (still leaving me way higher than I ever saw with a modem).

Also lifted straight from SaskTel's ADSL FAQ:

- transmission speeds up to 64 Kbps upload and up to 1.544 Mbps download

64kbps upstream? Ouch! I don't do massive quantities of u/l, but when I do, I want them to be at least almost as quick as a d/l!

--
James
To err is human, to really screw up requires a computer.

No ADSL? That's 'cause you're stuck in Ontario, man. If you lived in Saskatchewan you'd have your choice of modem, ISDN, ADSL, or cable modem service (assuming, of course, you didn't live in one of those wide spots on the road where the population drops 33% when the cow dies).