Hacker News Reader

Comment by niij | Hacker News Reader

Surely population density plays a huge role in the relatively lower coverage of both US and Canada compared to Europe.

Switzerland: 206/sqkm Germany: 240/sqkm Eurozone as a whole: ~100/sqkm Canada: ~4/sqkm USA: 35/sqkm

Canada's population density figure is deceptively low because most of Canada's landmass is completely uninhabited. Most of the Canadian far north has an even lower population density than the Sahara desert.

Canada's population is tightly clustered into a small number of urban areas that have population densities comparable to places like Philadelphia or Vienna.

Despite this, Canada's population centers have nowhere near the quality of public infrastructure of Vienna.

This is all accurate, but people still expect reception and speed when travelling between those dense population centres by road or rail.

Much like Australia, this means providers build the infrastructure to supply those areas but then the cost is recovered from the dense population areas.

Theres also some capatilism nonsense oligopolies thrown in there, but that's the core issue.

> This is all accurate, but people still expect reception and speed when travelling between those dense population centres by road or rail.

Why doesn't the consumer have a choice? I'd be willing to sacrifice coverage in rural areas in exchange for 50-80% discounted tariffs, for instance.

Because you don't want to increase the class divide between rural and non-rural areas. Or maybe you do, but most of us don't, and you have to conform to our values if you want to live with the benefits that a society of those values have produced.

There is no evidence that cutting coverage in rural areas will reduce prices elsewhere.

The Canadian situation is bad-to-zero coverage in rural areas and the world's most expensive cell phone service (think of plans that charge $10 CAD per GB of data) in developed regions.

The money that Canada's two cell phone networks didn't spend covering rural areas didn't reduce prices; it disappeared into shareholder pockets.

Isn't more than half the population something like < 100 miles from the US border?

I've always wondered why no big international player tried to enter that market, it's ripe for disruption, and the local operators sound like they are far behind.

The key phrase in the comment you're replying to is "in the few percent of the territory that’s covered". The vast majority of the Canadian population live in highly urbanised pockets.

They do, but they want reception outside of those densely urbanized pockets. They want reception on the highways between the cities, at their lake house, or if they live in a rural area. The denser population subscribers still pay for the infrastructure in low-density areas.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com