Canada Has 'No Plan' To Bring Broadband To Rural and Remote Communities, Watchdog Says (vice.com)

Canada has "no plan" to wire up remote communities that lack high-speed broadband connections, Canada's auditor general said in a scathing report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. From a report: The report comes just two years after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, an Indigenous community at the border of Manitoba and Ontario, and vowed that his government would work to end the digital divide that leaves rural and remote communities without high-speed internet.

"This report says what we already knew, which is that there is no strategy to bring the rest of Canada online," Laura Tribe, executive director of advocacy group Openmedia, said in a phone call. "What we keep hearing from the government is increasing numbers -- 80 percent, 90 percent -- but until we're at 100 percent, the problem isn't solved."

Comments

Problems

[fluffernutter]

A lot of our problems arise from the fact that we are a country with 4 people per KM^2.

Re:Problems

[Luthair]

This is a bogus argument, vast parts of the land are completely uninhabited. Telcos also like to bring up this sort of fact when the reality is that the areas they actually cover have density no lower than the rest of the world.

Re: Problems

[fluffernutter]

The Liberals have only been in power for 3 years. Pretty sure broadband is older than that.

Re:Problems

[Luthair]

Its a bogus argument because we aren't trying to cover the entire landmass with highspeed internet, we're only trying to hit the areas where people are.

Re:Problems

[Penguinisto]

Satellite Internet can give you 25-30mbps nowadays, no sweat.

It's a bit laggy (okay, laggy as hell), but it is serviceable. I've personally done webex VoIP over ViaSat(formerly Exede), and while it behaves like a one-way radio, it does work. I worked remotely over it before DSL showed up at my semi-remote homestead (they brought out 25mbps DSL because they were running fiber between two small-ish towns anyway, and it was near-trivial to plop down a few DSLAMs along the way.)

You won't be doing FPS twitch-games over Sat, but if you can get used to the slight start delays (think 2000-era http page-loading) it does do a fairly decent job of streaming, browsing, online shopping/banking/whatever, and similar.

The only real disadvantage is the bandwidth caps, and the fact that it's a bit costly to have even a 30GB/mo. plan. That said, prices have been coming down over the years (it used to cost a friggin' mint), and I suspect that they will go down even further over time as the tech gets better.

Only question is, does Canada have geosynchronous satellites that can be reached from most (if not all) rural areas they have? Is it even possible for that to happen in extreme areas (e.g. Northern Yukon Territories) without having to have some rather extreme angles on the ground-side dishes? Also, yes, some folks won't be able to get it due to obstacles (massive trees, mountains to their immediate South, etc.) But, that said, if they can overcome all that, at least *most* folks in rural Canada can get broadband (even if it means having a few dishes shotgunned together in a village with a local (and obviously somewhat boosted) wireless access point for the residents to connect with.)

Re:Problems

[Penguinisto]

I don't think they're truly shooting for reductio ad absurdum here... it could be as simple as linking villages larger than X people via a single point or two with Satellite Internet (with the 'ground station' being located where it can link up), and spreading the joy via local wifi/wireless.

Re: Problems

[ShanghaiBill]

The Liberals have only been in power for 3 years.

Also, the summary implies they went from 80% coverage to 90%. That is a dramatic improvement, so I don't see what people are whining about.

Saying "until we're at 100 percent, the problem isn't solved" is idiotic. Nothing is ever 100%. That would mean every alley or campsite with a homeless bum needs to have broadband.

Re:Problems

[Rhipf]

One way would be to force Bell and the rest of the landline providers (I know who uses landlines anymore but...) to actually upgrade their equipment so that they could provide hardwired Internet access. I would even be happy if they used the old equipment that was pulled out of the cities to provide high speed and fiber connections. The phone lines around here don't even support 56K modem connections due to the equipment not getting upgrades for eons. Even though there is a copper phone line going to most (all) houses in the area all we have access to for Internet is cell based (~2-3mbps). This isn't terrible but the data caps are awful (tiered so first 3GB is ~$40/mth). I would be more than happy with a 2mbps dsl connection if it was offered (not holding my breath).

Re:Problems

[dryeo]

Last year Telus built a cell tower, probably subsidized and I moved from dial up ($45 a month plus phone line) to a LTE connection. This gives me 12-25 Mbs down,1-3 up with a 250 GB data cap at close to a hundred a month, probably subsidized as well. This connection is considered a rural thing and is quite common in the hinterlands of BC and works well enough. Can stream at good enough quality and most everything else is good enough.
Nothing like that where you are?

Re:Problems

[fluffernutter]

Out of interest, why don't you do satellite? Someone above seems to think it is a great solution.

Re:Problems

[dryeo]

Mountains and trees in the way and according to my neighbours, the LTE connection is much better, faster, lower latency and cheaper if you use it much. They all dropped satellite as quick as they could after testing.

Re:role of government

[Luthair]

Well, the reason rural locations have access to electricity and phone lines is due to the government having a role in getting those lines deployed in the past.

Re:But 5G is on the horizon

[fluffernutter]

You may be underestimating the sheer size of Canada versus the range of a commercial tower.

Coming Soon

[lazarus]

This seems like a problem that SpaceX is going to solve for them.

The Canadian government will follow this up with funding for First Nations to get on board and then claim victory.

Not to Worry

[rally2xs]

Canada's gov't is right to stay out of this. Why? Because it's expensive and unnecessary.

Elon Musk is going to "wire" the world with over 10,000 low earth orbiting satellites:

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/s...

Low earth orbiting means the latency problem won't be a problem, and you can use 'em to do your First Person Shooter games with low ping times. Will require some waiting, but you can't wire up Canada before Elon Musk / Toney Stark / Iron Man launches his 10,000+ satellites. Hey, when you've got rockets that work and are much cheaper than anyone else's, you can do s*** like that...