CBC:
The CRTC has declared broadband internet a basic telecommunications service.
In a ruling handed down Wednesday, the national regulator ordered the country’s internet providers to begin working toward boosting internet service and speeds in rural and isolated areas.
With today’s ruling, the CRTC has set new targets for internet service providers to offer customers in all parts of the country download speeds of at least 50 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of at least 10 Mbps, and to also offer the option of unlimited data.
This is a “good news, bad news” kind of thing for Canadians. Many of us, myself included, are in rural areas and don’t have access to anywhere near the speeds the government is now mandating (my internet seems particularly good at this moment but even then, I’m getting 3.83Mb/s downloads and only 0.96Mb/s uploads). The bad news is there is no cap on the rates ISPs will charge rural customers so they could effectively price the service out of availability for us country folk.
What percentage of Canadians live in rural areas (I don’t mean cities in otherwise rural dominated provinces, but really rural)?
PS: according to Wikipedia, 20-30% depending on the definition of rural. MUCH higher than I’d have guessed…
The linked article says: “The CRTC estimates two million Canadian households, or roughly 18 per cent, don’t have access to those speeds or data.” I live about an hour outside of Vancouver and outside of a town called Chilliwack. We’re surrounded by farms and would definitely be considered, at the very least, “extra-suburban”, if not textbook rural.
Yeah and an hour outside Vancouver isn’t THAT far. In fact, I’ve been to the area you live in (at Harrison Hot Springs). For places like that I’m surprised they don’t just run cabling parallel to the 1. Now, if you were way the heck out there in Keefer, etc… that start to trip my “look, you moved out to the back end of the boonies….” reaction. But Chilliwack ain’t really the boonies, at least not to me.
I’m approx 30 minutes east of Chilliwack.
TOO FAR!!! 🙂
“The bad news is there is no cap on the rates ISPs will charge rural customers so they could effectively price the service out of availability for us country folk.”
That,of course is balanced by the lower residential costs and taxes most rural residents pay, especially in BC’s agricultural land area. The expectation that areas of large lots, and long distances to install infrastructure should experience the same costs is outrageous. I’m guessing that in addition to a lack of Broadband, such areas often also do not have a community sewer system, municipal water supply system, regular bus services, nor, likely taxi or pizza delivery. Sometimes it makes sense to go where the services are, instead of expecting them to come to you.
Tell me about it…. 🙁
On the other hand, infrastructure spending can be an enormously successful long-term investment of the type that publicly-held corporations could never justify. Consider the build-out of telephone, rail and highway systems in the US, for example, which super-charged generations of economic and technological growth.