SpaceX applies to offer high-speed internet service to Canadians
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
I spent a lot of time and money on a rural internet project in Canada. Every time we entered a community suddenly there would be a project from the local telcos and cable companies to wire up that one community. They would never do this proactive, just reactive and unless we threatened to move in they would never lift a finger and continue to charge an arm and a leg for some ridiculously slow service.
These government sanctioned monopolies are terrible for Canada.
If you mean that it's not state or federal, that's right (as far as I know).
The behavior that you observed is perfectly rational when connectivity is delivered over a wire. The goal is to make it clear to the competitor that they can't make money anywhere that they try to compete.
But in this case SpaceX will be delivering connectivity to everywhere, all at once. The targeted efforts that incumbents can use to shut down local upstarts don't work when the location to exert extra effort in is "everywhere".
It's usually only possible for the public to see overt government intervention, but once in a while you see a situation where a government drops a case.
As a Canadian I'm pretty excited about the potential for good internet outside of the cities and well beaten paths.
FCC filings suggest 25 is the absolute minimum for service, the final constellation is likely to use somewhere in 40-60 as the actual limit.
I've received this question a few times now, anyone have a better name? Or maybe I should just add a ? button with a diagram?
So the diagram may be the best option, maybe with a Wikipedia link if there's an appropriate one?
An optimist might believe Starlink will work at 10° above the horizon. A pessimist might doubt anybody will get it working below 80° (ie almost directly overhead). The reality is likely to be in between and this UI lets you see the effect.
For the curious, here is the wikipedia page [2] with details on the US Space Surveillance Network used to obtain this data (30+ ground-based radars and optical telescopes worldwide, plus 6 satellites in orbit).
[1] https://www.celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/supplemental/ (didn't link directly to the starlink txt file on purpose, link for reference only, please don't hug the site to death)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillan...
I grabbed a set of TLEs from celestrak (which I'm serving from my site), and then I propagate them forward with satellite-js [1] to the current date 6 times a second.
There's also a second stage that will cover the poles (they're required by the us government to get Alaska iirc), so eventually it will cover all of it.
I have friends who live in Iqaluit, Nunavut. It's a nice place to live with a cool community, but everything there is very expensive, including internet service. How about $399/month for 5 Mbps service, capped at 55 GB? And that's with the resident's discount! If Starlink were available here it would be an absolute game changer.
Seriously though, the population of Nunavut is roughly 40k. I guess that 90% of them are potential customers so maybe I shouldn't dismiss them too early, but you can see why I think SpaceX is right to consider them (and the other northern areas) lower priority.
But there are stripes over specific areas of interest, like Canada and Africa. Maybe it's just coincidence that I looked at it when they were there?
Anecdotal data point: For a while, AT&T had an North-America wide plan for $~40/45 for month with 10G LTE with the rest being 3G. I kept this in Canada because there would be nothing close to this there - it was cheaper to use the American service.
I've always used my own phone with prepaid plans and the cheapest plans in Canada are awful compared to the cheapest plans in the USA. I also lived in the GTA, not some remote village.
When I traveled in Africa several years ago I paid about $20 for a one month data plan (1GB IIRC) that included a usb dongle to connect to my laptop. In Canada the same service would have cost ~$100 at the time.
The duopoly in Canada ensures little will change unless it's mandated by legislation. Having Musk enter the fray is welcomed news.
Yes we get hosed on roaming (even you Rogers). But, it turns out a local sim is inexpensive, unlocking is guaranteed free even even under that contract (for more than a year now)
It was terrible, it's currently improving. It doesn't compare to a £15 sim in London with 15GB of data and unlimited chat/text in 2017. Nor do the plans for Canada's shorts[0]
>Carol Jobity of Adjala-Tosorontio, just west of Barrie, Ont., is similarly supportive.
>"Please approve this," Jobity wrote to the regulator. "We're in support 100 per cent."
>Iqaluit resident Brandt Chu said he's in favour of the proposal because of how remote life can be in Nunavut.
I find it a bit amusing that 2/3 of the people complaining live in municipalities within commuting distance of Toronto. Surely CBC could have found comments from more than one Canadian who actually lives in a remote rural area, Barrie and Cedar Valley do not count. Those two areas would be better served by a wireless ISP, unlike truly remote areas which make up large swaths of the province.
It's not an environmental thing that gets transferred by geography so comparing the commute distance doesn't make sense. More accurate correlation would be household income in the neighborhoods there is lack of Internet.
As for household income proximity to Toronto is an indicator of wealth in itself.
I don't mean this in a belittling way, but if you are from California your concept of 'remote' is vastly different to ours in Ontario, where we have less than half the population in ~2.5x the landmass, and that population is mostly in the Toronto area. Now imagine what 'remote' must mean in the less populated provinces and territories (Ontario is the most populated province).
> It's not an environmental thing that gets transferred by geography so comparing the commute distance doesn't make sense.
Proximity to Canada's economic and telecommunications hub (Toronto) does in fact influence access to the Internet.
>More accurate correlation would be household income in the neighborhoods there is lack of Internet.
There is access to the Internet in the two communities I mentioned, which is why I brought it up in the first place. The access isn't as good as downtown Toronto or some areas in the suburbs, but in comparison to actual remote areas it is fantastic.
My entire point in the comment that you replied to is mentioning Barrie and Cedar Valley in the same breath as Iqaluit, a place so remote even access to basic foods is expensive, is absurd.
I know you don't know where any of these places are.
So it’s easy on a rural road even near a big city to have very, very few options if the cable company didn’t bother to run a wire down your particular street.
Not sure if it has changed since, but here’s another example: https://www.theifp.ca/news-story/8404569-xplornet-north-halt...
I imagine we’ll hear fewer stories like this within 5 years now, but it’s been a long time coming — even if you have LTE service, it’s not cheap enough for data-hungry TVs and PCs.
My point isn't that these areas are fine and don't need better service, my point is they should not be compared to truly remote areas without even basic cell service (there are a lot of these if you drive north about 6 hours).
Getting annoying that people are trying to rebut a claim I didn't make when all I'm doing is bitching about the CBC in keeping with Canadian tradition.
It's been a long time since I had to use satellite, but I'd happily take even the most oversubscribed WISP out there over satellite internet.
That's the only place the service will function, unless you're using it in a park or field somewhere in the GTA... so yeah I guess.
Assuming your roof is the same height or higher than nearby roofs and other obstructions.
The target market for Starlink -- according to Musk -- is "the 3% to 4% of the population who are hardest to reach through terrestrial networks".
So yes, "the boonies" are the market. Almost no one reading this is in that market.
It seems self evident to me that the intended customers can't be urban, suburban or even exurban residences; the satellites won't be able to serve a large population of closely spaced transceivers.
They don’t have internet service available.
If spacex wants to do this, I’m all for it
Edit: I know the article isnt targeting this, I just cant help but rant
https://services.crtc.gc.ca/pub/instances-proceedings/Defaul...
Western Canada only has one rural ISP of note: Xplorenet. Competition would be a welcome change here.
"At the time BRINCO was praised for having built the station with no public money from Newfoundland, while Hydro-Québec assumed nearly all the financial risk. It is unlikely that BRINCO would have found other investors willing to take on that risk.[11] In 1981 it made a good return on the investment at almost no risk.[6]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_Falls_Generating_Sta...
I don't want to see the actual ISPs become government-run, just the local fiber between users and the nearest meet-me room. Let people have a choice of who lights up that fiber, and what bandwidth and services they want, but make it possible for anyone to compete without trenching their own fiber. (And, closely related, make sure every new development has not just conduit but fiber through that conduit for every home.)
Here in DC, the public labor unions forced the government to rehire subway inspectors who had gotten fired for falsifying inspection logs. (Public police systems in the U.S. face the same exact problem, except with far deadlier consequences.)
They tend to figure things on the way. Or not :)
But 25 years later there are constant political squabbles over why no ISP has followed through. Many plans and lots of money has been spent planning but then an election occurs.
The newly elected party exclaims the other guys had it all wrong and we need to start over.
And he is promising them a better internet.
I would not worry about that.
My great circle skills are lacking, and looking at a globe it seems like a lot of water for the rest of the orbit.
(Come to think of it, with the PSPS phenomenon here in NorCal, I might end up being that bored guy this very year!)
With a LEO constellation, unlike GEO, you can not just serve a single area. That is why you have to go with a very big, worldwide system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_(satellite)
The orbit those are doing (a Molniya orbit) means they are looking down at Russia for many hours, then they zip around the far side of the globe quickly, then back to hanging over Russia.
Geostationary is cool, but it's very expensive, and lots of Russia is very far North for which Geostationary sucks anyway. So, do cheaper orbits with more birds, but with a very eccentric orbit and voila, you've solved the problem.
Highlights:
"[Pic of 12h orbit] Usually the period from perigee +2 hours to perigee +10 hours is used to transmit to the northern hemisphere."
"In practice, a satellite in a Molniya orbit serves the same purpose for high latitudes as a geostationary satellite does for equatorial regions, except that multiple satellites are required for continuous coverage."
However that's a bit of a simplification that ignores things like the need for ground stations, local laws (I will be astounded if they're allowed to broadcast over China), gaps in their orbital shells (such gaps probably don't actually exist, I haven't looked carefully at their orbits), local obstructions like mountains/valleys, etc
Eventually they won't, right now they do.
"Service levels of 100 Mbps down / 40 Mbps up would generally be anticipated, but depends on how dense the user-base is within a region. Latency will be very low, ~30 ms or so, far quicker than existing satellite-based solutions due to our much lower orbit, and comparable to fiber. User segment is a 19-inch electronically steered antenna, mounted on one’s rooftop."
And a more recent test by the Air Force measured 610 Mbps with an aircraft in flight, though of course there was very little contention to worry about.
> Elon Musk's SpaceX has applied to offer high-speed internet to Canadians living in remote areas by beaming it to them via satellites.
Nowadays they just look at other plans and say, nope, you're on something better than anything we offer now.
FWIW Fizz is the new hotness here. They have worse coverage outside of metros, cheaper base plans, zero phone customer service (problem for negotiating cheaper deals I imagine), and rollover data, which Virgin does not.
Quote: ------
The CRTC requires telephone and cable companies to sell access to their networks to independent Internet service providers (ISPs) at regulated wholesale prices.
They wouldn't when they realise that it is a cheaper alternative to existing satellite internet services, not cable internet. Also that it would have reception issues in urban and suburban areas which is why they are targeting rural areas.
They do? I live in northern New England an hour so from the border and have some Canadian friends who complain that they have at best the same sort of mediocre 5-10/1-2 ADSL I did up until a year or two ago when fiber became available. They refer to their phone company as "the Jolly Roger" with all said connotations. Looking at this Canadian National Broadband Internet Service Availability Map seems to back that up too:
https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/sitt/bbmap/hm.html?lang=eng
Looks like even 50/10 let alone anything better has pretty minimal penetration, with a lot on really mediocre speeds providing wider areas. Even before sat<>sat optical, Starlink has potential to do a lot better for a lot more people. And once density gets good enough with sat<>sat links, Starlink may flat out offer better latency to remote parts of the world then existing connections thanks to the 40% speed benefit of c in a vaccum/air vs non-photonic bandgap fiber and a more point-to-point topology. That won't matter to everyone but it may be very valuable to certain remote workers.
People are often better at complaining than at remedying their situation.
Some years ago now I was at a friend's flat. He lamented that ASDL was poor. "They'll never offer anything better here" he said. I thought that was odd because I thought I'd seen a cabinet for his section of the district where we both live. So I suggested he check. He waved me off, no need to bother right because he's sure it isn't an option. So I typed his address into the checker and it said he could buy 80Mbps vDSL.
As a result of course he has 80Mbps vDSL. Now, if I'd just agreed "Yeah, it sucks" how long do you think he would have taken to realise he could buy faster service? A year? Five years? Maybe he'd still be moaning now on our Friday Jitsi call instead of complaining that the terrible webcam setup he cobbled together back in late March sucks?
And people have investigated because basically not having internet is something of a pain but it is what it is.
Starlink definitely will be able to at least smooth out the current total patchwork. The question will just be if it's a low density area and (while constellation is building and before optical interlink sats) if it's in a covered zone. Won't always be the best option I'm sure, but it won't be the case that two people a mere half mile away as the crow flies with a small hill between them have to deal with total feast/famine differences.
I know Canada is a huge, sparsely populated country with many isolated, remote communities. But I'm astounded that "30 kilometres north of Toronto" is considered one of those locations so remote that you can't get fast, affordable internet service. So it seems like there are potentially a lot of "remote" Canadians.
1. SpaceX will also offer high frequency travel in space and around earth