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Canada Communications The Internet

Canada Has 'No Plan' To Bring Broadband To Rural and Remote Communities, Watchdog Says (vice.com) 182

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
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."
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Canada Has 'No Plan' To Bring Broadband To Rural and Remote Communities, Watchdog Says More

Canada Has 'No Plan' To Bring Broadband To Rural and Remote Communities, Watchdog Says

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  • Problems (Score:5, Informative)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @02:56PM (#57675318)
    A lot of our problems arise from the fact that we are a country with 4 people per KM^2.

    • Re:Problems (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @03:02PM (#57675352)
      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.
      • Could be I'm drinking the kool-aid then, I'm not going to argue that.
      • How is that a bogus argument? People per sq. mile is THE reason almost ALL corporations look at before thinking of building an empire there.

        • Re:Problems (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @03:21PM (#57675462)
          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.
          • But how do you propose the signal get there in a way that doesn't cost more for people who do live in a highly populated area?

            • 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-gam

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by Rhipf ( 525263 )

              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 (

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by dryeo ( 100693 )

                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?

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

                  • Re: (Score:3)

                    by dryeo ( 100693 )

                    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: (Score:2)

            by mi ( 197448 )

            If I move to live on the ice at Northern Pole — will you be willing to fund all of the:

            • A kindergarten and school for my children over there?
            • A road connecting my one-family village to the nearest other settlement?
            • A fire- and police-department?
            • Oh, almost forgot, a broadband Internet cable?

            No? Why not? Is it, perhaps, because I'll live in too remote a place — as determined by the population density?

            • Good luck getting government residential zoning on the north pole. If you don't have that, you don't have a leg to stand on.

            • 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: (Score:2)

                by mi ( 197448 )

                I was merely explaining, why population density is relevant to the conversation. And not just relevant — important.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dryeo ( 100693 )

              More realistic is postal service as well as phone and internet, kids are home schooled or shipped to the big city to be educated. There are a few small villages spread over the north and why shouldn't they have some basic services? Or perhaps you figure we should withdraw all the people in the north, and give it to Russia? Having a population up there is part of maintaining sovereignty.

          • But that's exactly the point that the GP had.
        • It seems to me to make sense that it is difficult to serve a town of 100 if there is nothing around them for 200 km but I don't really have an axe to grind today.

      • Your's is the bogus argument.

        'The areas they actually cover' is the 80%, not the 20% left.

        Also you are just wrong about that 80% being the same density. It is high enough that it gets served, but still _much_ lower than places like NYC, London, Tokyo or Hong Kong. Most people don't want to live, sitting in their neighbors laps.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by iCEBaLM ( 34905 )

        As much as I'd like to shit on Bell for being all around dicks, this is not the case. Outside of large cities the population density in Canada is extremely low. So low that 20 years ago the area where my grandparents raised my mom and her 13 (!) brothers and sisters still used a party-line phone system. Keep in mind this is only a couple hours drive outside of Toronto.

        I work for an MSP that does IT work for small/medium business in my area. A lot of our customers can't get internet connections faster than 5

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          I used to be able to drive to downtown Vancouver in an hour (traffic was a lot better then) and had a party line until about 25 years ago. Last year finally got cell coverage and a rural LTE plan with a 250 GB limit and 10-25/1-3 connection. These rural LTE plans seem to be common in the hinterlands of BC.

      • That's exactly right, vast parts of the land are completely uninhabited, and yet those lands have to be crossed to install the physical things needed for proper broadband. You can't run wires over that distance, and even installing a cell tower is a major undertaking.

        Example, Grise Fiord up in the Arctic? Like a 100 people, only reachable by boat or plane (and only in the summer). Any telecom construction that needs to get there requires you to plan 1 year in advance, pack everything (_everything_, becau

    • Could they fund broadband everywhere by completely cutting Trudeau's cosplay budget?

  • However... (Score:2, Informative)

    by zkiwi34 ( 974563 )

    The Canadian government will probably spare no expense in making copious supplies of marijuana available, even if you live 500 miles from the next human being.

    • Actually, some First Nations areas ban MJ stores. If you were Canadian, you'd know that.

      I think you're confusing postal delivery to remote areas, which is normally by plane, and sometimes they have to airdrop the mail or supplies due to weather and ground/sea conditions.

      Same things impact providing high speed internet. If it's not from satellites, it's not going to happen.

  • Because (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Canada's rural area is actually rural. Try bring broadband 100 miles to serve 2 people?

    In the USA though, very little of of the USA is that remote unless you are talking about Alaska. The vast majority of "rural" America is almost always less than 30 minutes to a "major" city of at least a 1000 people.

    The vast majority of rural Canada or Alaska it might be hours before you see another living sole, let alone even before you hit a 1 horse town with 20-50 people.

    • If you live along the Alaskan coast, you can charter a boat and catch some mouth-watering sole for dinner.
    • I took a driving trip through North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Nevada and was stunned to see how much land is uninhabited.

      • Uninhabited is mostly just perception. There's a lot of ranching and farming, but most of the buildings aren't close enough to a major road to see. The population density is very low though in many counties. For those many people living out on farms or ranches and away from the major towns or small cities, broadband and sometimes internet service at all is just as elusive as for our Canadian friends to the North.

        There are many places in those states where even cell coverage is spotty. Some of this is to b

  • Look, right now polar bears are eating people in the North.

    No, I'm not kidding. They can't hunt on the ice, due to climate change, so they're eating people.

    You want high-speed internet? It has to be provided by satellite. Can't run a cable 2000 km for one family.

    It's part of why Yellowknife literally is running out of food. As we speak.

  • In fairness ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Some of these communities are so rural their phone service is barely functional.

    Years ago I had the misfortune of working on some stuff related to Canada Post. They have a computer system in which the local retailers dial in, upload their transactions, and then disconnect.

    The problem is in some places the phone line was so crappy even over a low speed dialup line, it couldn't be made to work.

    We'd call them up, ask if we can dial into their machine, and then waste an hour or so trying to make a telephone li

    • When I lived north of Kaslo BC we were on a party line. Fun times!

      A lot of the areas near power generation - like hydro dams and wind farms - use the power lines to provide high speed internet, but you have to live near the power cables. Not everyone is hooked up to the grid.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      You need a good modem. Where I am, I had quite a few modems that would train down to 0kb/s quite quick. Ended up with a USR robotics that would maintain 26.4 though the upload speeds seemed to train down to about half that. Then you need a serial port to hook it up to, the USB modems I tried all died fairly quick.

  • Have no fear! Capitalism solves all needs of the consumer!
  • A capitalistic system of telcos is going to focus their infrastructure building where they can make the most return on investment. In other words areas with the highest population density. They'll also happily employ any technology they can (ie ADSL, etc) to enable broadband over existing copper infrastructure since it's relatively low cost for them and gives them near monopolistic access to a customer base in many areas. Running actual fiber lines costing thousands of dollars to the middle of nowhere so

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      The problem in the north is there is no backbone to tap into. Even satellites are below the horizon in the far north. Musk's Starlink program probably won't have satellites that far north either as the population is so low.

      • Musk's Starlink program probably won't have satellites that far north either as the population is so low.

        Musk's Starlink program will have huge numbers of satellites that far north, ideally located to provide even higher density service to northern Canada than they will to any part of the US apart from Alaska. Thousands of Starlink satellites will be in polar and near-polar orbits, criss-crossing Canada at every latitude. You don't put 12,000 satellites in low orbits without them covering a whole lot of the planet, since they have no choice but to go in circles all the way around the planet. If SpaceX doesn

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          Somebody else informed me that they'll be up to the 70th parallel with 18 hour a day coverage. We'll see how it goes.

    • One hope for rural broadband might come in the form of some kind of low orbit satellite endeavour, like SpaceX's Starlink service - if it ever gets off the ground and they can get the costs under control enough in order to get a return on the investment.

      Get off the ground? Tintin A and Tintin B have been in orbit since February. Test satellites launched by SpaceX to prove Starlink systems. Get the costs under control? They were soliciting a $700 million loan recently, with the intention of building more than 12,000 satellites for Starlink. They're expecting to spend less than $60,000 per satellite. That's fantastically cheap for any satellite larger than a CubeSat, which these are. If you actually account for the time spent by faculty advisers and g

  • Canada should help fund StarLink (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This project seems to make more sense for Canadians & rural America :
      Elon Musk StarLink [digitaltrends.com]

  • Coming Soon (Score:3)

    by lazarus ( 2879 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @04:16PM (#57675752) Journal

    This seems like a problem that SpaceX is going to solve for them [theverge.com].

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

    • Was thinking that as well, but requires a big if - if the orbits of the satellites are designed to give 100% world coverage (very high latitude) and not just the lower latitudes (where most of the people live and would probably cost less).
      I hope the orbits cover the world (including polar) and it'll work, as it would be perfect then.

      • Given that they're planning on putting up 10,000+ satellites, it seems likely at least a few will service the northern latitudes.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          It takes more then a few to cover an area. They're going to be something like 500 miles up, a satellite will be visible for what, 15 minutes? Perhaps half an hour, so 50 in an orbit to cover one strip. 10,000 isn't actually that many if you want to cover the whole planet and I'd guess the profitable populated areas will be higher priority.
          What's really needed is 3+ satellites in those weird Moinya orbits but they have drawbacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          • 50 out of 10,000 isn't a lot. They could bump that up to 500 and still have plenty to service the more populated latitudes. I can currently get (expensive) satellite internet from Iridium pretty much anywhere on the globe, and they have less than 100 satellites total. Increasing that by two orders of magnitude ought to improve things a wee bit.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dryeo ( 100693 )

              Yea, someone else pointed out they're planning to service up to the 70 latitude with 18 hour a day coverage. We'll see how it goes. At least it is relatively flat up there.

  • Not to Worry (Score:4, Informative)

    by rally2xs ( 1093023 ) on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @04:21PM (#57675784)

    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... [nbcnews.com]

    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...

    • That sounds like it will be expensive. Part of solving this issue is to keep prices down around the range that someone in Toronto would pay.

      • That sounds like it will be expensive.

        Based on your gut feeling? To me it sounds like it shouldn't be expensive at all. Now what?

        Part of solving this issue is to keep prices down around the range that someone in Toronto would pay.

        The only way to do that is by subsidizing it. The actual resource cost of providing a service to a handful of people in the middle of nowhere is always going to be far more expensive per-person than providing the same service to a city of 5 million people. Regardless of whether you're using fiber, microwaves, radio-towers, or satellites, the only way you're going to make prices equal is by charging people in the c

      • It's not the person in Toronto that worries about this, they've already got broadband with fibre to the node, or even fibre to the home. It's the community of 50 people living on Ellesmere Island that are most impacted. Although Qiniq does provide 4G service (using satellite backhaul) to a number of remote communities

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      Will he bother putting enough over the far north where there is little profit due to few customers or will he put them where the population is? 10,000 isn't really that many to cover a whole planet with redundancies and such, it's not like they're going to be in Geo-synchronus orbit where a good chunk of the Earth is visible.

  • (I'm Canadian, in a megalopolis suburb.)

    First off, in Canada, the vast vast vast majority of the population is fully high-speed, fully cellular phone, fully wired, fully connected in every way.

    Second, the vast majority of rural communities are just as well connected.

    Third, our idea of "high speed" is, well to be polite, leaps and bounds above what the USA thinks is "high speed". Simply put, our low-end is above the USA average.

    Fourth, and this is no joke, the reason that all of your cellular providers adve

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      (I'm Canadian, in a megalopolis suburb.)

      So am I, an hour to downtown Vancouver with good traffic. We finally got cell coverage a year ago, which allowed me to get off of dial up.
      The only thing that the cell providers seem to excel at is having the highest prices in the world. I don't get many dropped calls because I can't afford to use cell much.

  • What is the best way to get broadband coverage for people living in extremely sparsely populated ultra-rural areas?

    1) Spend enormous amounts of money building fiber to remote communities and households
    2) Spend a smaller but still large amount of money investing in SpaceX's Starlink constellation, which can potentially benefit all Canadians, not just ultra-rural ones

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      I doubt that Musk will have much interest in servicing the far north, at least until last. There's not much money in it.
      Best maybe is a few satellites using Molinya orbits.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Guspaz ( 556486 )

        They're planning at least 18 hours of coverage a day at the 70th parallel, which is pretty far north:

        https://licensing.fcc.gov/myib... [fcc.gov]

        There aren't a ton of people living above the 70th parallel, so this still seems like a better solution than trying to cover eight million square kilometers of sparsely populated areas with fixed broadband. And if Canada wants 24 hour coverage north of the 70th parallel, presumably they could pay SpaceX to provide that additional coverage, and I'd bet it'd still be a better i

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