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Canada The Internet

Trudeau Promises To Connect 98% of Canadians To High-Speed Internet By 2026 (www.cbc.ca) 126

Posted by BeauHD from the ambitious-targets dept.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says its government is now on track to connect 98% of Canadians to high-speed internet by 2026. CBC.ca reports: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a handful of cabinet ministers held a news conference in Ottawa to launch the $1.75 billion universal broadband fund -- a program unveiled in the federal government's 2019 budget and highlighted on the campaign trail and in September's throne speech. Most of the money was announced in last year's budget. "We were ready to go in March with the new Universal Broadband Fund and then the pandemic hit," Rural Economic Development Minister Maryam Monsef told reporters. The prime minister said the government is now on track to connect 98 per cent of Canadians to high-speed by 2026 -- an increase over the previously promised 95 per cent benchmark -- and to link up the rest by 2030.

About $150 million from the fund will be freed up to fund projects aimed at getting communities connected by next fall. Senior officials with the department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development said applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis until Jan. 15, 2021, with a goal of having projects completed by mid-November, 2021. Deciding who gets upgraded connectivity first will depend on the service providers applying, they said. The prime minister said the government also has reached a $600 million agreement with Telesat for satellite capacity to improve broadband service in remote areas and in the North.
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Trudeau Promises To Connect 98% of Canadians To High-Speed Internet By 2026 More

Trudeau Promises To Connect 98% of Canadians To High-Speed Internet By 2026

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  • That or catch up on the concepts oh high speed and percentages.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      This is just going to be "give the money to starlink and call it done"

      Honestly, as long as it's not Bell, Rogers, Telus, or Shaw operating it, I don't care how it's done.

      • The funny thing is that you think Musks companies are any better. So much better in fact that you want to lock people into them.
        • Better at being able to connect 98% of Canadians to high-speed Internet? That seems quite likely at this point.
          • But probably not with enough bandwidth for a family of four to use all at once.
            • Probably yes, given how the bandwidth of the system will increase with satellite upgrades and the number of those satellites.
              • Yes I always forget with Musk he always makes it sound just around the corner, while it will really take 20-30 years.
                • If it took them 11 months to launch 835 satellites, while still ramping up, why would it take them 20 years to launch the remaining ~11k satellites? Even at the average rate so far it would only take 12 years, without any further ramp-up, not 20-30 years.

  • Why not just say 100% and count on Star Link covering every inch of Canada?

    • Because we Canadians don't tend to like to subject people to having one choice. Personally I don't think anyone will need Starlink after this. It will be way cheaper per mbps.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by grogger ( 638944 )
        Yeah we like to give hundreds of millions to private corporations to maintain a duopoly that for some reason always offer the same services at the same prices.
        • There are a lot of people in those areas that could use a job. I'll let the big guys have the win because they'll probably help in this case.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        Who says he doesn't plan to use StarLink for that?

        I haven't read TFA but I heard that Canada was interested in StarLink. It's a perfect fit for low density population in a geographically big country like Canada. That announcement comes in just days after StarLink beta went live.

        • But since then we have found out Musks claims that it will be equivelent to cable internet are false. So while some people may want to pay more for slower service, not everyone has to.

          • Cable Internet connection: 10-500/5-50 Mb/s [broadbandnow.com].

            Starlink: 160/23 Mb/s [forbesimg.com]

            Is that comparable or not? To me it seems comparable.

            • I have cable internet (in Canada) and it is 1Gb. Where do you get 50 from?
              • Well, I personally get 50 Mb/s from a DSL line, but I've not mentioned *that*. How did you know?
              • I went to the link and I understood better what you meant. Canada is not going to get 160 download from Starlink. If it is 160 then that would be better then LTE at $60/mo at least; and probably good enough for a family of 4.

                • Canada is not going to get 160 download from Starlink

                  And why would be that the case?

                  • Musk has said 50.
                  • Besides, you can't expect people will still have as much bandwidth once everyone is on and sharing the resources.
                    • No, they will have more bandwidth in the future since now today only have about 7% of the network operating and the next generation satellites are not going to be any less capable than the first generation ones.
                    • "...since today they only have..."
                    • They have 7% of their network but 0.5% of the eventual customers.
                    • If it's 0.5% of the eventual *global* customers, then it doesn't matter. The limitations are largely geographic. Customers near Nairobi won't have any effect on the communication of customers near Vancouver.
                    • So you're saying everyone who is going to sign up for Starlink in the US already has?
                    • Of course not, that would be silly. But considering that US land area is around 7% of the total land area and considering that only 7% of the network has been deployed, global coverage with the full constellation should be able to handle 200x times as many customers as it does now. Coincidentally, your 0.5% of the eventual global customers being users of the network right now matches this exactly.
                    • You are completely missing population density in your calculations. 7% of land area does not mean that Musk only needs to increase by 93%. I know that the cellphone tower around my cottage gives me perfect connection in the winter. However, when everyone drives out there to go to the beach in the summer the whole thing bogs down to totally unusable. I'm not saying Starlink will be unusable in the end but you certainly can't expect on having the bandwidth that people are getting today.
                    • If you get 14x as many satellites, 14x as much land coverage, and simultaneously better equipment on the ground AND in space in the future, you're saying you can't multiply the number of users by 200x while preserving the current bandwidth per user?

                      I know that the cellphone tower around my cottage gives me perfect connection in the winter. However, when everyone drives out there to go to the beach in the summer the whole thing bogs down to totally unusable.

                      Yeah, now imagine having 14 cellphone towers in the same area, with different towers serving different people. Still having a bad connection?

                    • BTW, average population density in the US is 36 people per square kilometre. Globally it's 25 people per square kilometre. There doesn't seem to be a reason to think that the average global Starlink customer will be significantly worse off than the average US Starlink customer for population density reasons. Furthermore, global rural population is at 3.4 billion, US rural population is at 60 million, meaning there's 55x as many people in the world outside of the US for which Starlink is expected to work wel

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            We're talking about places with no cable internet, just satellite or if lucky, LTE.

            • LTE costs around $60/mo canadian for unlimited where I am from. That comes with a dish and a booster.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Rhipf ( 525263 )

                Well where I come from in Canada we are paying ~$60/month for a ~2mbps connection (3G cell) and 5GB/month before we roll into the next tier of payment. There is no prospect for a faster (4G LTE) connection anytime soon and there are no wired connection options available. I would call where I am at rural but I'm sure others would call it remote (though true remote is the far northern parts of Canada). It would be nice if all of Canada had access to unlimited Internet for $60/month but that just isn't the rea

                • Sorry to break it to you, but as people pile on after beta, Musk is likely to have less throughput for all and he will just shrug and say his product is too popular.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by dryeo ( 100693 )

                  Yea, they were supposed to replace the copper with fibre where I live. Instead they (Telus) ran the fibre to a new cell tower and sell rural internet over LTE, about $90 for a 250GB quota (now if you sign up, 500GB). It's not bad except in the evenings when it often becomes crap.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by dryeo ( 100693 )

                Lucky, I pay about $89.60 a month (including taxes) with a 250GB quota for LTE from Telus. The crap internet router thingy also cost $300 (they sell it for $60 if you only use it for home phone now). No dish or booster needed for cell reception as the tower is perhaps 6 miles away.

    • Re:Star Link? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lazarus ( 2879 ) on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:58PM (#60706158) Journal

      Because SpaceX does not donate to his political campaigns. Telesat Canada's ONLY political donations over the past 20 years have been to the Liberal party. In Canada if you want to win a federal election, you need to win in Quebec (they have almost 25% of the seats in parliament), and the Liberals graft generously in the province.

      On top of that if the Canadian Federal Government contracted an American firm for broadband access the media would NEVER stop talking about it. You have to understand how sleepy Canada is. Not long ago a Conservative MP falsified his travel expenses to the tune of $90k ($50k USD) -- claiming it was a mistake and paying it back as soon as he was caught. Canadians were still hearing about this "scandal" TWO YEARS LATER.

      Canadians are "nice" (in a passive aggressive way). But don't be fooled. It's political as hell. Skewering politicians is a national sport there.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Probably not a good idea to put your country's critical infrastructure in the hands of a foreign company run by a guy who keeps failing to deliver on his promises and getting in trouble with the SEC.

        They could launch their own but just biting the bullet and laying fibre is the best option. Plenty of bandwidth for today and for the future. Replace the old copper lines. Do it once and you are set for another 100 years at least. 5 year budgets are the real issue.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          We're talking about places where copper line was never put in and often there aren't even roads.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            So how are they planning to get them 50mbit broadband?

            Wireless? If they can't easily run cable then wireless is probably not going to be easy or reliable either.

            • Yes, in reality most of this money is going to go to Bell, Rogers and Telus. Now, there are tons of regional WISPs deploying all sorts of fixed-wireless solutions, and they'll get some part of the pie. And the government does want to see fiber installed. There's a lot of little towns where it makes perfect sense to put FTTH in place, and get actual Internet connectivity via microwave backhaul or the like. That said, there's a part of me that says 'we ran hydro out to goddamn everywhere, we can run fiber

            • So how are they planning to get them 50mbit broadband?

              Wireless? If they can't easily run cable then wireless is probably not going to be easy or reliable either.

              Wireless isn't so hard. You put up some towers with WiMax radios to serve each community, with microwave relays for backhaul. They're pretty reliable. I've been on that sort of system for most of a decade now, except that I switched to having my own dedicated microwave relay and guaranteed backhaul bandwidth, not for reasons of technology but because the provider oversubscribes their WiMax by too large a margin.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dryeo ( 100693 )

              Combination of fibre, satellite and LTE? Telus claims close 50MBs over LTE and it is what they did for me, fibre to the cell tower then LTE for the last half a dozen or so miles with the government picking up a lot of the price for the tower. Though I'm lucky to get 20Mbps down as I'm in kind of a hollow.
              Besides, last I looked, the 50Mbps was only for the south with 25 Mbps for the north.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rhipf ( 525263 )

            There are places a lot less remote that still only have access to crappy 3G cell based Internet. We have a fibre line running down the highway near us but still don't have access to even DSL since Bell has no incentive to spend any money to upgrade there equipment here. Sure there are places that don't even have copper lines but how would that stop money being spent to upgrade the old copper systems to fibre where the copper already exists (and the fibre backbone is already in place).

      • The last four years has exposed a lot of internal American politics to Canada (namely, the divisiveness). The most curious thing about it is the way people on both sides rabidly support their side and shit all over the other. They will ignore bad behavior when their side does it, and fly into a rage when the other side does it. Unfortunately I've seen this starting to be imported to Canada... historically, I'm used to people hating all politicians of all stripes, and holding them to the same critical eye

    • Because "The prime minister said the government also has reached a $600 million agreement with Telesat for satellite capacity to improve broadband service in remote areas and in the North.", that's why.

  • Cool. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by RyanFenton ( 230700 )

    Yeah - he might not make that number - but by trying and being willing to put shared resources towards a legitimate shared needs - he's doing a much better job than most who never even try at this scale.

    It definitely opens up a lot more positive possibilities for the future than what we've been living with here in the USA for the past few years.

    I hope we get more young liberal leaders soon taking up positions our old conservative ones have been ignoring for decades.

    Biden's cool and all for who he was electe

  • I have to wonder how much of the 2% (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Monday November 09, 2020 @08:49PM (#60706012)

    Are indigenous/aborignal/natives.

    Since most of them live far from the US border where the majority of Canadians live.

     

    • I'll have to check with my cousin Chuck in Tuktoyaktuk.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )
      Where do you get the impression that most Canadians live far from the border?

      Over 2/3 of Canada's population live within 100km of the Canada/US border.

      • They were stating that most of the aboriginals/natives live far from the border, unlike the majority of Canadians. Also have to read the subject line for it to possibly parse correctly.

    • Re:I have to wonder how much of the 2% (Score:5, Insightful)

      by c-A-d ( 77980 ) on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:57PM (#60706472)

      So, I've worked on a project in the past to connect first nations communities to the internet. Let me tell you what that problem is.

      But first, what there will be no problem for: Capital expenditures. There will always be money to install new hardware. Politicians LOVE capex. They have a physical item that they can point to and then say, "See! This is what we did!" while their voting base drools out of the sides of their mouths.

      What there won't be money for: Operational Expenditures. They'll fund the operation for a short, fixed period of time. And then, when that's over, those communities will be expected to pick up the bill. Well, guess what. They rarely, if ever, do. The operations will shut down due to lack of funding, services cut off, and they'll be back the way they started.

      This project will happen the exact same way. There will be money to build it. There will be money to fund it for a short period of time. People will use it because its free or subsidized. But when the funding stops a lot of users will just let it go. They'll determine that they don't really need it or they just don't want to pay for it.

      And you'll have the end of yet another federally funded political project. It'll die off and the next politician will come in and make a grandiose pronouncement to do the exact same thing that the last guy did, but this time it'll succeed! Yeah, right.

      • Yeah, I saw a similar documentary on water supply to first nations.
        There's been more than enough spent over the years on clean water systems. But not enough on operational. So the systems always fall into disrepair.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Seems a bit expensive given that Starlink is supposed to be operational soon and covers Canada. Still, I guess after posting a $343B deficit and increasing the national debt by 25% this year alone I guess $1.75B seems like loose change to Mr. Trudeau.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ahodgson ( 74077 )

      Seriously, he spends that before breakfast. The only restraint on his spending now is how long it takes to write press releases.

    • Probably there are some national security concerns of putting that kind of power on remove regions in the hands of US based companies. Same reason is used to justify why we don't have cheap cell service or a competitive airline industry...

      • I doubt that - the new 5G network is going to be built using either US or Chinese equipment (I cannot remember if Trudeau finally banned Huawei?) and that does not seem to be worrying them so why should similar equipment in orbit be any different? In fact, they could probably pay SpaceX less than the total Trudeau has budgeted to launch a separate constellation of Starlink satellites under Canadian control to just service Canada and then 100% of us would have service, not just 98%.

  • Define "high speed" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Monday November 09, 2020 @09:27PM (#60706098) Homepage Journal

    If you define it in 2020, it won't be "high speed" anymore by 2026.

    According to people of my grandpa's generation, time was, 300 bps was "high speed."

    • If you define it in 2020, it won't be "high speed" anymore by 2026.

      According to people of my grandpa's generation, time was, 300 bps was "high speed."

      Well - from the article - in 2016 the CRTC defined broadband as a minimum of 50 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up. Which honestly is pretty darned reasonable for home Internet, and will be for the next decade or so.

      Yes, yes, I happily moved up to 1G symmetric as soon as it was available, but... my link is idle the vast, vast majority of the time. Are there uses that require more bandwidth? Sure. Would it be nice to download 100G game preloads faster? Sure. But think about the stated goal here: 98% of the na

    • According to people of my grandpa's generation, time was, 300 bps was "high speed."

      But is that as relevant? 20 years ago I had 10mbps cable. There are still plenty of people classing that as "broadband".

  • Cost us Aussies $50B to achieve a similar thing (it actually cost way more, but even still, $1.75B vs $50B is a huge difference)

  • But MUSK will. Anybody who can afford $100/month can get StarLink, which gives you pretty good speed and pretty good latency. And the reliability will improve when the constellation of satellites is a little more complete.

  • What if fewer than 98% of Canadians want to be connected to High-Speed Internet?

  • Modern cities, with 2010 speeds (Score:4, Informative)

    by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:33PM (#60706408) Homepage Journal

    Starlink will certainly help the connectivity in rural Canada. When it comes to cities we have a company called Bell, which is Canada's equivalent of Comcast, that offers faster speeds, but then won't tell you how you can get fibre to the home, so you are then left with their legacy offering. I am in the country's largest city and I am dealing with speeds that we 'good' 5-10 years ago. Don't get me started on their pricing structure or how they nudge up the price every month >:(

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Their plan is only to offer 50mbps down and 10mbps up. That's not "high speed" and is already inadequate.

      With multiple users and more and more basic things like education moving online every country should be looking at rolling out gigabit fibre everywhere. Just get on it with, rip that copper out and replace it. Once it's done you are good for future upgrades too, e.g. Japan's fibre network started at 1000/1000 and is now at 20,000/20,000 just by upgrading the modems on either end.

      • And who's going to pay for rural fiberication?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Well I'd have the government do it. Borrow the money and then charge ISPs a low fee to access the network, enough to cover the maintenance costs and slowly repay the loan.

          Governments can borrow at extremely low rates so it makes sense to do that to build infrastructure than then has payback in terms of increases in general tax take as the economy benefits, as well as being able to charge for access directly in this case.

          A private company could do the same thing but it will end up costing more.

          • Just to make sure I understand what you're advocating here, you want to government to spin up a crown corporation that builds, maintains, and administers a network infrastructure, but not sell actual Internet connectivity, which third parties would connect to and sell service?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Yes. That works reasonably well in many places. State owned telecom company owns the infrastructure, ISPs buy access, install their own equipment at local hubs or rent it.

              In some places the infrastructure owner isn't state owned but is heavily regulated. The UK is kinda like that, the copper lines are owned by OpenReach and ISPs pay them for access, except cable companies who have their own copper. Unfortunately OpenReach is shit and not regulated enough so fibre roll out is very slow.

              • Well, the primary problem there is that the government isn't interested in doing that. The Canadian government prefers to hand money to an incumbent, have them build the infrastructure, then require them to open their networks to third parties.
      • Canada 'considers' that to be high speed, but I didn't see anywhere where it said that this would be limited to that speed. Certainly 50Mb up isn't enough for a family of four to use heavily at the same time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      Why not use a TPIA provider like Teksavvy?

      • Why not use a TPIA provider like Teksavvy?

        Teksavvy is not a provider. They are a reseller. I know, I get my cable internet through them. It is Shaw, except I don't have the distaste of paying Shaw.

      • I am moving to eBox. I don't get faster, due to infrastructure limitations, but I do get cheaper. If an ISP is increasing costs, while not increasing service, then they don't deserve me as a customer. Bell is a dinosaur, promises a lot and fails to deliver.

  • .... this will not work and is simply pandering. I live in a rural area, with two major cities around 15 mins drive away and our community relies on a single provider for wireless internet. My regular internet speed is around 1Mb down and it drops for a few minutes every couple of hours. A few years ago, they tore up the major highway linking the two large cities and relaid all the asphalt. It would be have trivial to run fiber cable at that point which would have given our little town high speed intern
    • I live in a small town in Ontario and my experience is the total opposite. The district municipality and the hydro utility have used federal rural Internet funds to build a fibre network in the area. I pay $70/month for unlimited, gigabit fibre to my home. It takes more than just the federal funds. I think the local government needs to be involved in building it, because if it's left to Bell and the other big telcos, we're all screwed. But yeah, it's easier to just yell "Trudeau bad".
      • Note that you say 'small town,' and he says 'rural.' Two different things. Sure, somebody can roll into 'small town' Ontario and run fiber along several of the housing streets, no problem. Drive ten minutes out of town, and you're finding individual houses a kilometer apart.
        • Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. I don't live in a Town per se.. there is a population of ~500 and we don't have our own council, municipality etc. My nearest neighbor is in fact 2.5km away. All of that is handled by the nearest City. Our community is small enough that if you're driving past on the main road and reach down to change the radio station, you'll have bypassed us without even realizing.

          In fact, the only thing we have is our own fire department which named after the community .. bu
  • Big telco push back deployment because why pay if we can just wait and let the government pay for it. The only way to solve this is get in the competition. They will tell yeah to get the subsidies you have to open your network. So the telco will charge double to the competition the price they ask to the costumers. This happen before and will happen again... I know im a small isp in rural area in Quebec and i see this on a daily basis.
  • Most pushes for rural broadband build outs are topically provincially driven, and the actual infrastructure is still built by the incumbents. It's nice hearing there is federal funding available, but I sure hope it actually helps new, fast and reliable connectivity in the remote areas.

  • https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]. Lies. I don't think he has ever made good on any promise. Just one of the many examples, the electoral reform "promise" he made in 2015, he broke before 2017 even started.

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