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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.
This is what I like to see, this is good stuff. This should happen more often, everywhere, but it doesn't. I think I like Canada more and more to be honest.
In the west there's Shaw Cable with speeds around 4000/350 or Telus DSL at 1500/256. In the east there's Bell Sympatico 1000/128, Rogers Cable 2000/128 and Videotron 3000/128. Plus there's also the various resellers that are basically rebranded from the bigger companies. The above all cost about $40-$50 CAN. Some companies are also introducing a "lite" product which offers 128/128 speeds for $25 CAN a month which is great for people that have little use for the internet but hate keeping the phone line busy. Even if you can't get DSL or Cable there is a satellite service which will allow you to download at better speeds than dialup.
This will bring more jobs and more broadband, hopefully the other provinces will follow.
Now, who wants to volunteer to put up repeater stations so people outside of Alberta can leech off of the public infrastructure? :)
Will Cisco be throwing in their patented 'Wall of Oppression' firewall package?
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.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Ashland, Oregon already has a publicly owned fiber-optic network through out the town.
http://www.ashlandfiber.net/
This is serving as the basis for a community wireless network. Businesses and individuals will hook 802.11b nodes up to their connections to the public broadband network and open it up to guest access by anyone within range. The goal it to get enough people involved to cover the whole town with WiFi.
http://www.ashlandunwired.com/
That's not to say that *every* unprofitable service should be provided but the internet is becoming increasingly important to modern society. The first communities to get these ubiquitous connections will start to be seen as high-tech communities. The rest will fall behind. They'll get it eventually, but by then it won't be any more special than the telephone. It'll snowball. As more tech-savvy (and high income) people move into the area, they'll increase demand for more tech-services.
Well, that's what I think anyway. OK, I'm dreaming. This is making Australia (where I am) look even more backwards. This will be really interesting to follow.
Not to spoil the party of those people looking for free broadband... but this strikes me as very silly for two reasons:
1) There are only 3 non-overlapping channels in 802.11b. Are all of the transmitter sites going to occupy just one of those, or will they use all of them to overlap and maximize coverage? How will this interact with private WLANs?
2) 802.11b is a stepping stone to future wireless LAN/WAN/etc technologies and a primitive one at that. Building a whole infrastructure around it is crazy. (see also: the reason North America is still on CDMA/TDMA)
I've seen a large number of projects crop up locally trying to connect all kinds of things with 802.11b... government facilities, hospitals, etc. Even my company is using it now to link our buildings. It's going to be very crowded with only 3 channels and no one to coordinate the whole mess.
The real shocker in this article is not that the Canadian government is doing something so tech-savvy in provisding ISP services...
... but that the province of Alberta actually has 422 cities!
(In fact, according to this google cached page, there are only 9 cities over 25,000 population!)
Color me amazed!
-RT
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
We can teach you how to play hockey =)
And sure, 802.11b is just a stepping stone to more effective technologies, but it's cheap and is a start. If we all waited about util the new super duper extra fast and secure systems arrived, nothing would ever get done.
As to who's going to co-ordinate it, well, you join up or fade into the background noise.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
And to say that the Canadian government could have used that money to make extra episodes of the X-files.
<Sig>The good thing about having a good memory is ... euh
I find it hard to see what kind of useful contribution Microsoft can make to this venture. Most of the large-scale networking infrastructure doesn't run on Microsoft platforms and doesn't use Microsoft software. Granted, Microsoft runs some large web sites, but that doesn't really seem a useful qualification. Any ideas?
Speaking as an Albertan
Yes, this is a cool tech project, yadda yadda.
However, the alberta government is doing this at the same time as they are introducing budget cuts to other little things like hospitals... The public school teachers are on strike (and the government claims there isn't any more money to pay them)... if we killed this project, I wonder if all the money that is going into this could do some real good, in more essential areas
(I mean, it's not exactly hard to get high speed internet in most of the province already!)
The governments are busy trying to relinquish all their responsibilities. They want to raise taxes and not have to actually do anything in return.
They are all desperately trying to get out of managing roads, rail, telecoms, education, energy, health, law and order. The only thing which they seem to want is defense. I suppose that's because the toys are bigger, more expensive and make loud noises.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
We call it CommunityNet here in Saskatchewan, and the project is over a year old. It's mandated by the Federal Government, Supernet just happens to be the name for the 'Alberta' part of the project. The mention of Microsoft or any other software provider is meaningless. Each hospital, school, government site runs whatever software they want, and here, serveral of them are running Linux, Mac or Solaris. Some of the schools also have the Sun One? connected to the network.
It's a nice project, and a huge cash cow for the big ISPs and hardware providers, but there is still room for the little guy to get a peice of the action
.
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
and take credit when it's completed. Standard marketing practice.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
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.
mogorific carpentry experiments
You have to hand it to Intrigna. They beat out Alberta's own telco (Telus) to get this contract, which to me is quite a feat. Intrigna jointly owned by BCE and Manitoba Telecom Services. MTS (majority holder) currently has a bunch of communities (from large to extremely small) in it's own province wired for dsl, part of its own 300 million dollar initiative to wire the province for highspeed internet.
:)
Wondering how much we pay for dsl? Try 19.95 for the first 6 months (~1.2Mbps down, 256kbps up) then the price is 39.95 each month after that. Free install and startup kit included, of course. How about them apples.
The use of the word "cities" is a little strong in the article... I'd imagine some of the communities have less than 100 people.
It's been said in earlier post that this is a good move. I agree wholeheartedly... this has so many more benefits than just 'getting everyone online'.
What many people fail to see is that by doing this, you'll draw young people into the world of computer science and other badly-needed fields, like engineering, physics and chemistry. Giving young kids the access to the vast resources that the Internet has to offer is going to encourage them to use the technology and become skilled with it, and that's the first step to a 21st-century workforce. Schools are laden with psyc, business and communications majors, none of whom are helping the estimated half-million job vacancies in high-tech job positions in the US alone. But get kids motivated and interested in technology, and even if a small percentage of them becomes so enamoured of it that they choose it as a career, Alberta is developing a very, very educated and desired workforce. This brings jobs and investment to the province.
I honestly cannot see why the US doesn't do this more. Kids' education here, let's face it, is suspect, and those that do graduate won't touch engineering and science (hence the glut of comms and psyc majors searching low-paying jobs in the market right now). But light the spark of interest in technology by granting them access to these resources, and reap the rewards many hundred fold in the future.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Can't you just hear it coming: "The voting taxpayers has paid to build this information superhighway so therefore the community should have some say as to the things that are allowed to be sent over this highway. [...]"
I'm certain that some people would make such arguments. But are those arguments any more valid than would be arguments asserting that pornographic magazines should not be distributed via a publicly funded and owned highway system?
Public policy should be decided on the basis of what is right, not on the basis of the invalid arguments which might arise from such policy.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Interesting government tactic. Find a service out of your control that people like, then agree to provide the service to the taxpayers for 'free'. Everybody knows who's paying for the service, yet the government will still claim it's free, and thereby extend their influence and power.
What's particularly interesting is that governments typically have not taken control of means of communications where private industry has been successful. Sure, there's the Postal service, but AFAIK, that wasn't a government take over, it was a government-inspired service (at least the Pony Express part). Somebody correct me if I'm wrong here.
Governments could have provided free newspaper, telegraph, radio, telephone, and television services, but they typically haven't done this to the exclusion of private enterprise. They tend to stick to things like sewers, water, roads - things that can really only be accomplished by local governments.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I intentionally left out the business side of the argument because I loathe the business side absolutely as much as I do the government side. What ever happened to folks just getting together and raising money however they please(out of pocket, fund-raisers, etc) and doing something they feel is a good idea? That is what I want to see happen.
The US had a monopoly Internet for a few years - NSFNET - which wasn't widely used by many other than academic and research folks, and really had done very poorly extending beyond subsidized locations. Yes, many of us /.ers cut our teeth there and have wonderful memories of the fun we had (at significant taxpayer expense), but we can't forget that while NSFNET advanced the protocols and connected the schools, the real revolution came when real, normal people got connected (I know, this is soooo anti-elitist!)
In 1992, I worked with a rural community of about 8,000 that wanted to launch a freenet. The local NSF regional gave us a quote of $65,000 up front plus $2,500 a month for Internet service - using a 56 Kbps leased line! (They had 35 PhDs on staff and naturally had high costs - that was their justification).
Thanks to the pioneering efforts of UUNET, CERFNET, PSI (now defunct, alas), Sprint, NEARNET/SURANET, and the folks at the Commercial Internet Exchange, the NSF monopoly (which was planned to go into a Bell-like regional with ANS and the RBOCs running the show) was broken apart. Multilateral and later, bilateral peering, became the norm. Exchange points grew (like MAE-E, MAE-W) and the commercial market blew open.
This commercialization is what also brought hundreds of millions of regular people (read "not employed by the government") onto the Internet. Not 23 years of NSFNET, but 3 years of commercial Internet.
While you'd think folks would have discovered the government model doesn't work, we still have numerous states, municipalities and even national governments trying the old way. Iowa, for instance, built a boondoggle fiber network that costs $75,000 to get a connection. Sure, you get fiber, but the Internet connectivity squeezes down to a connection no faster than an ISDN pipe at the egress to the Internet. Although the taxpayers paid for it, many of the fiber customers are leaving for - you guessed - competitive commercial service. We've got the same issues with municipalities providing broadband and having to raise electric, sewer and gas rates to cover their inefficiencies.
I really hate beating a very dead horse, but for some reason some folks like the previous poster continue to believe misnomers. The Internet isn't like a highway system and it doesn't benefit from government administration.
What it does benefit from is being offered and operated by people that focus on this and only this expertise - not people that also issue your license plates, run the welfare agencies, operate electric power, clean your sewer, etc. Being a competent ISP is not a part-time operation.
It also benefits from competition, since this is usually about the only motivator for most folks.
*scoove*
/me feeds the troll:
:^D
Whoa there, Mr. Rebublican. Two hops short of Cuba? Don't think so. We are as democratic as they come (well, almost).
This is a Canadian thing, you see. Our country is so big with so little population thay we are forced to be communictaions intensive. Yup, lots of our infrestructure is government mandated, but it needs to be - otherwise, it just wouldn't get done. Private Industry wouldn't do it, and well they shouldn't, since there's not much profit to be made. However, we as a country essentially need top shelf communications like this in order to remain a country, since we wouldn't speak to each other much otherwise. It may sound weird to USAians, but it's good for us - like universal public health care. I for one look forward to conversing with my Albertan comapatriots over High Speed bit-pipes - it brings us closer.
So, at the risk of being a jingoist,
Take off, eh?
Soko
PS - Maybe you're just miffed at the Hockey Gold we won.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
They are about two hops short of Communist Cuba as far as governmental control of facilities goes
This is flamebait.
I'm just interested in why anyone would want the government to handle those sort of domestic industries.
Maybe for the same reason that governements have handled other kinds of infrastructure projects (interstate highway system, rural electrification project, etc.). Because the government can bring a service somewhere that the market alone wouldn't touch.
Why is it when someone doesn't like something it is a troll or flamebait? That aside, rural electrification could have been done by private groups(read not industry) without having been force-fed.
lol, I didn't watch the Olympics... mainly b/c I hate listening to people moan because they didn't win. I can understand your plight of long distance communications, however isn't it possible for you and your buddies to create a means of communicating. For instance, you and a group of folks get together and instead of begging the government to do it for you, have fund raisers and what not(I'm not talking about starting a commercial venture) and get your own network started. It has been done before, why not now-days? Where I'm from, my family set up their own electricity in the boon-docks using diesel generators. It was a nieghborhood thing, not a government thing. Then, they had all of their rights yanked out from under them and they can't do that sort of thing now... they _have_ to buy power from the power company... governmentally sanctioned monopolies run by private corporations. See, I'm pissed at both sides!
And this differs from the US how?
Although hardly original, Canada excels at confiscating the personal property of its citizens and repurposing it. Too lazy to work? No problem! We'll give hoser free health care. Don't feel like paying cost for broadband? We'll give it to you for half (though it really costs us four times as much as the private sector - but hey, it's not our money! Hahaha)
Once again, how does this differ from the US? Ever hear of Medicaid? The Medicaid system is far larger and more expensive than Canada's health care system, and it is being expanded.
You've demonstrated an amazing ignorance of what a nanny-state the US truly is. At least the Canucks are getting something out of it. In the US you pay comparable taxes, which are immediately sent to Israel. Enjoy!!
Why is it when someone doesn't like something it is a troll or flamebait?
What makes it flamebait is not the fact that I don't like it, but the fact that it is so far removed from the truth that most reasonable people would disagree with it. I can't think of any reasonable person who can realistically compare communist Cuba with the democratically elected government of Canada.
That aside, rural electrification could have been done by private groups(read not industry) without having been force-fed.
Maybe, maybe not. It's pretty easy to speculate about all kinds of alternate history, but the fact is, that's not what happened. And, I don't think that anybody is suggesting that rural electrification was a failure, even if the government was the instigator.
This is Alberta (pop approx 2.5 million), not Canada. No other province can afford it.
n d/foreword.a sp
I believe Singapore is far ahead of any of the nations you mentioned.
http://www.sgbroadband.com.sg/broadba
rural coverage isn't "somewhat patchy" it's nonexistant.
Not true at all. Between fixed-wireless (and NLOS developments coming to market now - finally!), DSL, satellite service, cable modems and potential power-line technology, there's a solution.
If you're not serviced yet, you're dealing with a problem of "too small to be of interest yet" - something that'll be solved as the bigger markets get built out.
After all, if you had to choose between two otherwise identical jobs - one paying $80K/year and one paying $12K/year, we know which one you'd pick. Service providers are no different - and since it usually takes us a year or more to recover our capital investment, we must focus on the bigger markets first (or else go out of business).
Regarding your biting the bullet and getting a T1, I'd suggest you check first. We've come into towns that have had multi-billion dollar corporations with food processing plants that have been trying to get a single T1 for 2-3 years (to no avail). No amount of lobbying can get the incumbant to upgrade and provide service.
Find a competent fixed wireless company and offer them a hilltop or a water tower and see how your luck changes.
*scoove*
[snip rant about subsidized internet access leading to rationing]
Who ever said anything about subsidizing internet access? A government-owned monopoly != a government-subsidized service.
I think that the government should run fiber-optics everywhere, but I also think people should pay to use it. (And that includes ISPs which want to lease fiber; while I think government should be involved in providing the raw fiber I am far from convinced that they should get involved in IP packet switching.)
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Hello, I Work for Morrison Hershfield Ltd. We have been contracted out by Axia to handle much of the Construction managment, site aquisition and logistics of this job. Alberta is being divided up into Geographic regions each with several locations for sites in them (I belive there are 50-100 or so). I'm not sure as to the details of yet (The job has just begun rolling down here), but each of these regions is divided up into several sites which need to be setup. Perhaps the document is off with the 422 towns. I belive it would be more accurate to say 422 locations or nodes for service.
Perhaps you missed the word 'net' in there. I didn't mean it in a gross and net kinda way, I meant it as in the Internet population.
mogorific carpentry experiments
That might be, but I have personal reports that the government is funding similar efforts in other states.
For example, I know people in the *Yukon* who have broadband. You're talking an area at least a thousand miles away from any place that would be called a 'city' in European terms!
I am not quite so familiar with other provinces, but I hear that Ontario and Quebec also have broadband pretty far out into the sticks.
mogorific carpentry experiments
I said that you can't *expect* them to be viable not that it's *impossible* for them to be viable. I said that if they're *not* profitable, but are important, then the government should step in. The computer market in general *is* profitable, so... what are you talking about? How is it relevent to what I was saying? My point was that until technologies like broadband are profitable, they should be helped along. The computer industry is already profitable and so needs no help. You're just using my post as a way to bring up the whole Microsoft-Linux thing in a seemingly on-topic way. That's low dude.
Indian bands cannot stop roads, power, etc in Canada.
This is now entrenched in law; the Supreme Court has ruled that any aboriginal or treaty right may be infringed to develop the social and economic resources or infastructure of Canada.
Part of the reason the Supreme Court had to make a ruling at all is that each and every band in Canada negotiated a specific, individual treaty and therefore they are all unique.
As strange as this may sound, Whitehorse Yukon is far more likely to have hi-tech telecomm than even urban areas of Ontario and Quebec; it's the nature of the beast.
They've been getting their TV from home sattelites for 30 years; phone networks are not based on landlines, etc. If a rural resident (which in the Yukon means "doesn't live in Whitehorse") has a telephone and a computer, it's almost certainly a sat-based TV/broadband service they're hooked up to.
Satellite phones are nearly as common in the Yukon as regular cellphones are in many urban areas (recent trouble by Qualcomm, etc hasn't affected Canadian customers, just like Iridium continued for a year in Canada after US customers where cut off).
For those in Whitehorse (a town composed of college-educated administrators and young, single men, typically transplants from somewhere else in Canada and there for the work; the Yukon has Canada's highest average income) they get broadband from the same Teleco and Cable firms that operate in BC and Alberta.
In other words, this is the land of early communications adopters.