Trudeau government promises to connect 98% of Canadians to high-speed internet by 2026

[WkdPaul]

Summary

The Canadian government announced the launch of the universal broadband fund, a $1.75 billion program unveiled in the federal government's 2019 budget. It's goal is to build broadband infrastructure in remote communities.

 

Quotes

Quote

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.

[...]

Deciding who gets upgraded connectivity first will depend on the service providers applying, they said.

[...]

"Good reliable internet isn't a luxury. It's a basic service," he said.

"Now more than ever, a video chat cutting out during a meeting or a connection that's too slow to upload a school assignment — that's not just a hassle, that's a barrier."

 

 

My thoughts

Seems like good news IMO, we're a large landmass with a huge concentration of the population near the US border, so it makes sense that companies won't invest in infrastructure in remote location without incentives. This will help in the long run, if not before.

 

 

Sources

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5794901

 

Government page about the program ;

https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/139.nsf/eng/h_00006.html

[eeeee1]

its just my question that "is the current liberal government capable of doing and supporting this?"

 

[Letgomyleghoe]

god i wish this would happen in the US, if im stuck with comcast for another year im gonna claw my eyes out, currently paying $150 a month for ~120 mbps down 10 up, im in the middle of a massive residential zone to its not like im in the middle of no where

[WhitetailAni]

8 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

god i wish this would happen in the US, if im stuck with comcast for another year im gonna claw my eyes out, currently paying $150 a month for ~120 mbps down 10 up, im in the middle of a massive residential zone to its not like im in the middle of no where

Same here - when using the 5GHz band.

I get ~110 Mbps up and ~12 Mbps down.

Using the 2.4GHz band is... worse.

~70 Mbps up and ~5 Mbps down.

I have xFinity.

[leadeater]

YAY Canada!

[Letgomyleghoe]

Just now, ragnarok0273 said:

Same here - when using the 5GHz band.

I get ~110 Mbps up and ~12 Mbps down.

Using the 2.4GHz band is... worse.

~70 Mbps up and ~5 Mbps down.

I have xFinity.

i also have xFinity, they have been pissing me off lately, sadly there is no other option, i cant even get century link to run a fiber optic cable around the corner

[williamcll]

What is their definition of fast? I mean in comparison to Coaxial, Elon's Starlink in Canada is fast with 150Mbps download and 70ms latency.

[givingtnt]

Trudeau be simping for Elon

[Taf the Ghost]

That doesn't seem like enough money to do much of anything for this type of project?

[captain_to_fire]

1 minute ago, Taf the Ghost said:

That doesn't seem like enough money to do much of anything for this type of project?

As per Siri: 

• Canada: 37.4 million people in 2019
• USA: 328.2 million people 

Sure Canada’s land mass is larger but their population is smaller. As far as I know and Canadians can correct me on this, but majority of their population is residing near the US border. Am I right @wkdpaul

[leadeater]

8 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

That doesn't seem like enough money to do much of anything for this type of project?

 

Quote

Initially, the plan was to have fibre within reach of 75% of the population by 2019 with an investment of $1.35 billion. In August 2017, the government announced the target was to be expanded to 87% of the population and to be completed by 2022

Note: NZD not USD or CAD above.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-Fast_Broadband#:~:text=As of June 2018%2C unlimited,1000Mbps download %2F 500 Mbps upload.

 

Canada isn't also starting from such a bad state as we did either.

 

Billion dollars goes a lot further than people seems to think.

[Taf the Ghost]

3 minutes ago, like_ooh_ahh said:

As per Siri: 

• Canada: 37.4 million people in 2019
• USA: 328.2 million people 

Sure Canada’s land mass is larger but their population is smaller. As far as I know and Canadians can correct me on this, but majority of their population is residing near the US border. Am I right @wkdpaul

The last 20% always cost a very large amount of money. It's 90% of the population is 100 miles from the US border. So that last 8% they're talking about is likely to cost upwards of 30% of the whole project. Infrastructure build out costs matter a lot about distance. Part of why it's always fairly "cheap" to build in major cities. 

 

The issue is that the costs seem pretty low, unless it's a more complex system of subsidies and tax write offs.

[Taf the Ghost]

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

 

Note: NZD not USD or CAD above.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-Fast_Broadband#:~:text=As of June 2018%2C unlimited,1000Mbps download %2F 500 Mbps upload.

 

Canada isn't also starting from such a bad state as we did either.

 

Billion dollars goes a lot further than people seems to think.

Oh, so they've actually put in over 3 billion CAD in a public-private fund. That makes a tad more sense.

[Warin]

this is a speedtest from about 15 minutes ago. I pay ~76 USD per month.  I live in a small city.  I think the vast majority of any funding will be to get providers to expand rural infrastructure.

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Oh, so they've actually put in over 3 billion CAD in a public-private fund. That makes a tad more sense.

No that is my country, with accurate and real costing of what has been done rather than here where it's a projected cost. I can tell you now it'll cost more than what has been projected but not a lot more unless they change the scope of the project.

 

This sounds like it's more targeted to rural and more distant urban areas with substandard connection speeds and reliability where our cost was full national rollout.

 

P.S To the people that don't know the world map is not to proper scale or proportion and NZ actually is not that small land size. Sure not even close to Canada scale but like has been pointed out they don't use all of it for cities etc. So spent wisely a billions dollars will do just fine at connecting a lot of people to fast reliable internet.

 

https://thetruesize.com/

[GhostRoadieBL]

1 hour ago, wkdpaul said:

Seems like good news IMO

sounds like the government dumping money into an already bloated and overpriced monopoly. Passing legislation to demand companies (telus, shaw, rogers) provide equal coverage across all provinces would have been a better move. Force the infrastructure and prices to be fair across the country and everyone wins, this grant is peanuts to a company like telus' bottom line when they can still throttle their paying customers and completely ignore entire regions of the country which they deem not profitable. 

 

even now Telus have been throttling my 300/300 fiber to 75/75 until I call in and complain and then I get 2 or 3 days of 300, just long enough to test and confirm and then I'm back down again. This is common practice and we are stuck with them because no other company has connections to our area. 

[poochyena]

11 minutes ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

Force the infrastructure and prices to be fair

You can't do both. If you force them to expand into unprofitable and expensive projects, then they will have to dramatically increase prices.

[AldiPrayogi]

Too bad Linus would've already overtaken Trudeau by then

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

god i wish this would happen in the US, if im stuck with comcast for another year im gonna claw my eyes out, currently paying $150 a month for ~120 mbps down 10 up, im in the middle of a massive residential zone to its not like im in the middle of no where

That actually crazy. I have Xfinity and I get 680 down for less than that much. How is the price so different where you are is beyond me. 

[Gaires]

1 hour ago, williamcll said:

What is their definition of fast? I mean in comparison to Coaxial, Elon's Starlink in Canada is fast with 150Mbps download and 70ms latency.

Seems like 50mbps download and 10mbps upload.

Quote

 But its data suggest just 40.8 per cent of rural Canadian households have access to download speeds of at least 50 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of 10 Mbps.

The government said those speeds will allow Canadians to work and learn online and access telehealth services.

 

1 hour ago, Taf the Ghost said:

That doesn't seem like enough money to do much of anything for this type of project?

One cheap way to do this would be to just use 4G or 5G.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

Summary

The Canadian government announced the launch of the universal broadband fund, a $1.75 billion program unveiled in the federal government's 2019 budget. It's goal is to build broadband infrastructure in remote communities.

 

Quotes

 

 

My thoughts

Seems like good news IMO, we're a large landmass with a huge concentration of the population near the US border, so it makes sense that companies won't invest in infrastructure in remote location without incentives. This will help in the long run, if not before.

 

 

Sources

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5794901

 

I do wonder how satellite internet a la tesla or whatever competitors appear would affect this?

[thorhammerz]

1 hour ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The last 20% always cost a very large amount of money. It's 90% of the population is 100 miles from the US border. So that last 8% they're talking about is likely to cost upwards of 30% of the whole project. Infrastructure build out costs matter a lot about distance. Part of why it's always fairly "cheap" to build in major cities. 

This. Have fun building on-the-ground infrastructure to link up those tiny communities sprinkled further north - it's mostly muskeg, forest, broken rocks, and tundra. It'd be more efficient to pay for a few extra satellites, but that would be categorized as efficient spending (i.e. not enough money flowing through the fingers of the bureaucrats / consultants / contractors).

Quote

The issue is that the costs seem pretty low, unless it's a more complex system of subsidies and tax write offs make-work contracts.

[Bombastinator]

I’ve been in southern Canada in the Midwest. There’s this gigantic subterranean mountain range called the Canadian Shield. Incredibly hard pink granite.  Pokes out in a lot of places, and where it doesn’t there frequently isn’t much on top of it.  If they’ve got to lay cable in that it’s gonna be a bitch. 

[wanderingfool2]

Back in the 2000's - 2010's I recall a similar kind of push happening...the issue back then was they used a very loose definition for how coverage was calculated.   i.e. similar to 1 address in a postal code had it, so everyone there was considered to have access.  The result, they took money and did the minimal possible service.

 

Notice no mention about affordability either for this (so as long as there is some service, even if it costs like $300 that matches the criteria then it's solved).

 

Actually read more into this... $1.75 billion, but it seems that it might have $600mill (34% of the budget) is being spent on a satellite internet company.  (Of which they don't seem to provide really consumer facing satellite internet).  Maybe it's the cynic in me, but this just seems like another waste of government money without any real outcomes.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

The thing is NZ is an island. Just that give it a huge advantage in laying out fiber on the coast and reducing land lines, which AFAIK are way more expensive and troublesome.

None of the money was spent on fibre trunks up the country and the ocean/costal trunks, they already exist. The money was entirely spent on FTTH and FTTN (VDSL2, rural areas) to properties. Fibre trunk infrastructure is typically adequate and already exist in most places as it is, none of that is actually very expensive at all. It's far more costly to break ground in cities, far far more.

 

Spoiler

 

This is not the map for UFB wholesale network, this is REANNZ the provider of the research and education network which runs over the same physical cabling but using their own dedicated wavelengths and their equipment is located in the same IX's as everything else. Basically this represents the physical cabling and that has existed for decades, only the optics + equipment have changed.

 

1 hour ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Most people probably live near the coast, which solves the problem for them. People on the countryside can probably be served with a few hundreds of microwave links (or a few dozens of our super large cells, or satellites).

No because that's not how FTTH deployments work and makes zero difference at all. And also no we are a farming nation i.e no greater amount of coast or inland population.

 

Being an island literally makes zero difference at all. Also you should probably get more acquainted with our land geography i.e. it's difficult and damn expansive to work with. Flat land is a rarity here. It's also why roading and rail is very expensive here to comparatively. 

 

P.S. Basically every country has these same challenges which is also why it makes no difference. There isn't anything particularly unique about us or anyone else, only scale changes to any kind of significant degree. Stop putting yourself in the mindset of US ISP's that have zero incentive to do anything other than bleed money from customers and BS about infrastructure costs and time frames, they have zero value in being listened to.

 

P.P.S Satellite internet is garbage as does not qualify as high speed broadband here. The slowest you can get is 700MHz 4G 30Mbps-60Mbps if you are REALLY far out and can't be serviced by cabling.