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In Canada's North, a Single Satellite Outage Means Losing Basic Services (vice.com)
Jordan Pearson, writing for Motherboard: Around 5 PM Eastern time on Sunday, a satellite providing internet services to most of North America went offline due to a technical glitch, the CBC reported. If you live the vast majority of communities in southern Canada or the US, you probably didn't notice. But in some parts of Canada's sparsely populated North, losing just one satellite means giving up basic services like access to ATMs or a flight out of town. In other words, life went offline before the satellite's function was restored on Monday afternoon. The satellite in question was Ottawa-based Telesat's Anik F2, which first went online in 2004 and has a coverage area spanning Canada's northernmost tip down to the southern US. Most places in North America don't totally depend on Anik F2 for an internet connection, and have landlines as well as other satellites -- even some of Telesat's -- to fall back on if one piece of equipment goes offline. But Canada's northern communities are desperately lacking in internet infrastructure, a situation that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has pledged to remedy. Some places depend on Anik F2's connection for everything. There is no backup.
"..leaving dozens of Canadians without Internet."
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Regardless their race, if some morons want to live in the middle of the wildness it's not everyone else's job to spend a ton of resources getting them reliable internet.
The satellite can see and be seen from northern Canada to Argentina. If it could only cover northern Canada, where would the beam go to? You want some "extra" coverage so you have options of spaceports for uplinks. Wide across the USA to link in SF, TX, or NY.
Learn to love Alaska
You got the road part backwards. When the roads are iced over, then its a good time to drive, the problem time is during the spring thaw, when the roads turn to a soupy mess.
Same rationale in the 40s and 50s maybe, why supply phone service to rural areas where they are too stupid to live in the cities?
You make it sound like there's a handful of kooks living in a shed. That's bull. These are long-established and recognized communities, mining operations, fishing outposts, and the like. Isolated isn't remotely the same as being out in the middle of the wilderness.
The issue is that there's a single point of failure for what is a huge amount of the country's landmass. One that's only going to grow in financial and military importance as time goes on. So why should Canada tolerate that? Satellite is the only viable option up north for good reason, but solutions still have to be found.
Not just spring thaw, but winter too. Polar vortices, el nino, all screw up the winter road system.
If you want to see this in action, it's well documented on the TV show "Ice Road Truckers". The last few seasons of which have exclusively focused on Canada. It's amazing since most of the driving has been below the arctic circle. Also, being from BC, I never knew there was such a thing going on in the winter - I'm guessing the mountains here pretty much make the entire province passable year round. If there is a winter road system, it's not well known.
That said, we do have our own hellish weather documented on "Highway Thru Hell" in the winters, but it's mostly all paved except for some forestry access roads.
Had to click to the article, and then again to the source to finally find out what area they were talking about, "northern Quebec and Nunavut". You'd think that's interesting information, and a lot better than just "North".
I mentioned having been up north for work. I was on the Ungava Peninsula, which is a fraction of the Canadian north. It's 252,000 sq km. There is zero infrastructure out there. When I mean zero, I mean literally zero. It's not much different from much of the north once you step outside of Yellowknife or Whitehorse.
The communities on the Ungava are all on the coast, which in theory would make it easier to deploy (and this applies to much of the north) since you don't actually have to provide 100% coverage, but I'd like to hear your proposal for building the stations and digging the necessary trenches when there is, as I said, literally zero infrastructure to help you along. Not just building roads, but providing the power necessary, where all power generation is dependent on boat-delivered diesel fuel. How do you manage that, year round? What do you do when something fails? Fiber + microwave is great, but the Ungava isn't, say, the Gaspé Peninsula.
There are certainly solutions to be found, and I think at least part of it involves existing technologies. But I genuinely think that the best-fit solution won't rely just on what we've done before, elsewhere.
Ellesmere island has around 150 people over 196,235sq km. Giant swaths of the north have absolutely no one living there at all. I haven't checked, but it wouldn't surprise me if you could draw out an area the size of texas with no one living there at all.
To put in context. I live in the NWT. It is the size of Texas and California combined. The population is 45k, half of which live in one town.
I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice a couple hours per year of downtime in exchange for not having to double the cost to have a completely redundant system in orbit. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one voting with my wallet on that one.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain