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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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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.)