Publicly Funded Broadband and 802.11

bflame writes: "The Canadian province of Alberta is building the infrastructure to provide highspeed internet service to 422 cities. The government of Alberta along with Cisco Networks, Microsoft and Axia will be installing highspeed fiber optic lines to link 422 cities. The contracts also required competition among ISPs to insure lower internet costs. Cisco provides a nice write up in IQ magazine. Globe Technologies is reporting that work has started on the Alberta Supernet. The government of Alberta has an article about the supernet along with this article." We've mentioned Alberta earlier - nice to see they're moving ahead with the project. And an anonymous reader sent in a link about the city of Tallahasee rolling out a public WLAN.

Comments

This is a Good Thing

[cperciva]

From a public policy perspective, I don't understand why there aren't more governments doing this. It is generally accepted that governments should provide and maintain a highway system; how is internet connectivity any different?

There are many things which governments get involved with (eg health care) which I think they should stay out of as much as possible; but when it comes to natural monopolies I certainly see that they have a role to play.

State of world broadband; Canada could leapfrog us

[wackybrit]

Canada is really good at showing up countries much higher up the GNP chain. Take a look at the G7.

First off we have the USA and Japan, broadband coverage isn't too bad in these countries, although rural coverage is somewhat patchy. Canada is one-uping both of these countries.

Germany is third. As of the start of 2002, Germany had 1.8 million DSL subscribers. For a country with a net population of something around 10 million, this is pretty good.

Next is the United Kingdom, my home country, which puts up the most pitiful broadband attempt of any of the top 20 countries by GNP. There are places 15 miles from LONDON that can't even get DSL yet. British Telecom has pretty much said that any telco exchanges not being converted to provide DSL by 2005 probably won't be done forever.. the demand is too low.

Unlike the Canadian government, the British government is keen for everyone to have broadband, but doesn't actually want to help. They believe that private enterprise will get there, and don't want to risk getting their hands dirty (a la Millennium Dome)

So, well done Canada. I think Canada will leapfrog us all, and with e-government and a 90%> wireup rate throughout the country, it could actually jump up the GNP tables and become a serious industrial contender this century. Heck, the tiny Netherlands did it in the 1700s.