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Alberta, Canada Goes Broadband -- By 2004
jasonu writes: "According to this article in The Calgary Herald, every town in Alberta, Canada with either a hospital, a school, a government office or a library will be getting wired for high speed Internet access by the end of 2004. I will finally get broadband!!" Though the article says this will be an "optical fiber network," it doesn't detail the mechanics of it, nor expected data capabilities -- but for $40 a month (Canadian), anything that sounds even remotely "high speed" sounds pretty impressive.
This is what I love about Canada: getting all these great things handed to us for far under cost, if not altogether free!
Education, health care, even food and shelter (if you can't afford it yourself). What a generous government to give so freely of its own money! I sure wouldn't give my money away like that!
I look forward to the inevitable day when our wonderful government gives us everything we need, and none of us need to work. I'm definitely voting Liberal!
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...Canada has the best internet access in the world.
Really.
Especially BC, where I am. DSL is 1.5 megabit and cable is the same. Everyone can get cable if you live in a city (i mean, if your city has cable).
Canada has the highest percentage of broadband users per capita of internet users in the world.
This isn't huge news. It's just cool that Telus is finally putting it's huge resources to work.
I'm hoping for fiber to the house by 2010.
I agree with you on a few points, but only in a limited way.
You see, I don't look at this as givine 'net connections to a bunch of people who will never use them.
This about when rural areas first got paved roads. I doubt many people had cars(after all, there were no roads, so no cars), and yet it made a profound difference not only in their communities, but to the nation as a whole(not that I'm saying good changes, by the way). All of a sudden, a farmer could feed more than people within 20km of his house - he could feed people 200-300kms away!
There's also a few things you may not realize.
a) Farming is actually an incredibly technical occupation. The amounts of data that a farmer generates in one year is probably more than an an average two-three story office building.
b) There isn't much to do out in the boonies. While farmers usually enjoy their work, their kids might not. This will immediately increase their quality of living. Also, the two absolutely brilliant people I met became brilliant studying on the farm they grew up on - their was nothing else to do.
Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Population of Alberta: ~2,700,000
Population of Rural Alberta: ~540,000
Population of Urban Alberta: ~2,160,000
We can probably except that %25 percent of Alberta's population will subscribe to the service(a large porton of rural areas, as well as a smaller portion of urban areas).
So, we've got 25% of Alberta's population(25% = 675,000 people).
675,000 * $40/month = $27,000,000 a MONTH.
So, how long do you think it'll take them to make up the $300,000,000 initial investment? Seems like a damned fine setup to me.
Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Farming is an extremely high-tech business these days. Check out Trimble, the first site in a Google search for "farming GPS."
Farmers are using sophisticated soil-sampling quality testing, with GPS, to determine fertilizer spreads. The GPS is used to mark the sample location and generate a "map" of the field... and the GPS is used to control the mix of fertilizer *as* it is being spread.
GPS is also used for yield monitoring, during harvest: volume and moisture content. Why is one area more productive than another? The soil/fertilizer/weather/etc data is reviewed and analysed, and plans made to improve yield the following year.
Some farms use GPS with insect infestation data to perform variable crop spraying. The most sophisticated systems mix the pesticide on-the-wing: concentration dependent on infestation level.
How about variable-rate planting? Overcrowding is ruinous in poor-yielding sections. Plant fewer seeds there, and save money. Variable-depth tilling: monitor the hardpan depth and till only deep enough to crack it.
Variable-rate irrigation will make a fortune for its inventor, particularly in water-poor states like California.
And so on. The farming business is as high-tech as one's imagination... satellite imagery mapping out stressed crops, so one doesn't need to sample all 4000 acres to locate the infestations? Why not!
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You don't need to make $120K in Canada. You need to make $70-80K in Canada.
Things don't automatically cost 50% more just because they're sold in Canada.
It certainly isn't a financial loss of any calibre once one calculates in the costs of being in America.
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It's not as if we don't have the funds for such an endeavor. A friend of mind crunched the numbers and figured that the cost of one aircraft carrier could put a computer on ever classroom desk of every school of every town, city, and state in this country (and we're in the processes of building a new one right now, right?).
Wiring the country for government subsidized broadband would be a lot cheaper than the aforementioned task. Grr...
Maybe I'm just bitter because my house sits in the middle of a DSLAM-lacking bubble.
This is a poorly researched /. story. It is, in fact, the entire country of Canada which is gaining a national fibre-optic network. information can be had here. If you read the site thouroughly, including the various white papers, you will see that the Canadian government has invested a large amount of money in the project. The aim is to create a national network by 2004. It's also a plan that Jean Chretien and Liberals are including as part of their platform in the upcoming election. Evidence can be found in what the Grits call Red Book III.
-- This sig is.
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I've long felt that governments who could afford it should start treating internet connectivity as another form of infrastructure. Like roads, water supply, and the rest, the internet is probably going to become extremely ubiquitous. Frankly, I don't trust any commercial entity with that sort of responsibility. At least governments can in some ways be held accountable.
Governments shouldn't have to do things like split big monopolies up - they should never have become monopolies in the first place. With the government hooking up its populace, you know you will always have an alternative. And, if for some reason the entire venture becomes "unprofitable", no politician is going to shut down the program after people have gotten used to it. They'll never work again.
Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)