SpaceX, Rogers to connect mobiles phones to satellites in remote Canadian areas
reuters.com
reuters.com
For non-Canadians, Rogers is the largest but also the absolute worst mobile/internet/tv provider in Canada. They routinely use grey area tactics to both bully competitors, and even bully customers.
For example, long in the past I rented an apartment in a large rental building. The building had a no solicitors rule. However, Rogers would routinely come into the building knocking on doors, somehow they got an exception with management who supplied them with a list of all non-rogers customers.
Where it got really obnoxious is that every month they would also have someone come and shove papers under your door that had a big "notice from management" on it. Photocopied like, looking for all the world like you were in trouble. Open up the paper, Rogers ad.
This is really pretty minor as far as this company goes.
This is for allowing phones in remote areas to send SMS and eventually voice calls without needing a Starlink antenna.
It’s not really in the same ballpark as Starlink’s home/RV broadband services.
To add some more context, their excuse for high prices and mediocre service is generally something to do with the size of the country, which granted they aren't exactly wrong, until you realize that roughly 90% of the entire Canadian population lives within 160km (100 miles) of a US border. Canadian telecoms are a legal cartel, for all intents and purposes.
Not a problem in other sparsely populated, geographically large countries, like Australia.
Take british columbia, a vastly big place by US standards. Drop one 50-mile circle on vancouver and you have 75% of BC's population covered in one service area. If you draw a line from the ski hills north of vancouver, to alaska, you will cross only two roads. Everything to the north is empty by us standards.
In addition, Cell phone networks need to cover the area people travel, so unless Canadians only travel in an area 11% that of those in the US, the point stands.
Honestly, that's probably not far off. Canada is enormous, but the vast majority of it is completely uninhabited or very, very sparsely populated.
There are large sections of the trans-canada highway that aren't covered (the only east west highway, and the main road across the country). I can't really count on having cell service on the highways between towns when I'm travelling in Canada so they aren't really providing much coverage there.
Just to drive the point home here's a map of Rogers coverage. They don't have a single tower in the three provinces that make up the northern half of the country. Canada, despite being large is really a VERY centralized country. 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border.
Was it data quantity that made that feasible? My Canadian plan is $45/month and has unlimited phone time and 6 gigs of data (which is great for my usage) and is on one of the big three carriers so coverage is great. Freedom mobile offers 20gb for $50, but their coverage is weaker (i.e. you're roaming outside of major cities). These convert to $33/$36 in USD. Both of these options look significantly cheaper than any plans I quickly see on the big US carriers, before even accounting for the roaming charges (albeit with more limited data)
Plus there was a time, albeit almost a decade ago now when the dollar was on par. Even about a year ago the dollar was still aiming for 0.8 rather than the 0.74 it’s flirting with right now.
Lastly, if you want an Apple Watch with cellular, you end up needing a more expensive plan from the big three rather than their sub-brands. And the Canadian government is threatening regulation to encourage carriers to offer more data for less. There was a time within the decade when $60 at Fido would get you 2GB and that was during a “double data” promo. This was 2018. https://forums.redflagdeals.com/fido-60-unlimited-canada-wid...
The plan I was referring to is an older tmobile plan with 3 lines on it. They come out to just under $50 cad per line including taxes/fees and that includes 5gb of Canadian/Mexican LTE/5g, unlimited 3g after that, as well as unlimited everything in the US, and no extra charge to call anywhere in NA.
I can roam on Bell, Telus or Rogers, so tend to get better coverage than my Canadian friends. I also get unlimited worldwide texting and 2g data when I travel for no additional charge.
If I switched to one of the new t-mobile plans, I would be paying $59/line, but that includes a free Netflix subscription, and 10gb of Canadian data.
I just priced out a roughly comparable rogers plan for the features I actually use (5gb, unlimited US calls, data in the US) and it comes to $65 CAD + $12 per day I'm in the US, or go for the unlimited US plan which is $105 CAD on a promotional offer right now. Add on another 12% for tax and a bunch of fees I'm sure I'd learn about after the fact, and keeping my US service is very competitive. Rogers new plans, are pretty new (I believe unlimited data only started in 2019 or 2020, and their definition of unlimited is 20gb).
The takeaway for me is that if I was just a single line, and I didn't leave Canada much, I would probably pay slightly less. Since I call and text the US daily, and travel there for at least a month a year, I save several hundred dollars a year on tmobile, and don't have to worry about getting billed hundreds or thousands because I forgot to buy a data pass for a trip across the border.
I don't think anyone in the US can even fathom the prices Canadians are charged for the service they get. My $80 Googlefi plan (4 lines) would cost around $500 plus a month in Canada.
Sort of the same law hack as Tesla does with their "showrooms", where you aren't in a dealership - you ultimately just order a car online from California even if you're a few states away.
I mean they're expensive, and anti-competitive, but their products and services are very good.
Think of them like Canada's Verizon.
The there is the nationwide outage that even got the federal government involved. Super ironic as high quality service was part of their justification for extremely high prices. Turns out they didn’t have basic redundancy down. I’ve never seen that kind of failure in any other company that size.
To be fair, everyone in the industry is completely awful. It is splitting hairs to say Rogers is the “worst” when they are all so completely terrible and lacking any redeeming characteristics.
SpaceX/Starlink has a nationwide license/permission from the Canadian federal government for direct to consumer LEO satellite services so it's very unlikely they would remove this as a service option.
Starlink has been revolutionary for people in some very remote part of Canada whose previous ONLY option was consumer grade geostationary Ku/Ka-band VSAT terminals at oversubscriptions ratios of 32:1 or worse. Xplornet, etc. Same tech as viasat/wildblue/hughesnet consumer stuff in USA.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rogers-shaw-merger-official...
and then this
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-industry-minister-jo...
Especially for hikers/campers who go up there for weeks at a time - would help with those situations where you want to stay camping for one more week but you can't as you've told your loved ones you'd be back by a certain date/time. Instead, a quick text to say you're okay and you plan to stay a while longer would be a nice convenience.
Unfortunate that Canada seems to be allowing the mergers of massive telecom companies without any concerns of monopolization, price fixing, etc. etc, though that's a bit of a tangent.
Also, screw canadian telecoms
Shaw isn't really a telecom in the traditional sense, they don't really have any mobile phone subscriber base. That being said, we've always had monopolization, and price fixing for those things in Canada.
(Shaw also spend some years attempting to build mobile infrastructure before buying Wind.)
Even though I'm sure it's nice for people to be able to post selfies from national parks, it will also exacerbate a growing tension between rural residents and the increasing number of tourists who mainly loiter in their cars and beside the road, have tailgates on peoples lawns, tresspass, and make a general nuissance of themselves - as distinct from hikers, campers, and trippers who are there to appreciate remote areas instead of merely using them as a platform for their instagram photos.
There's one part of Canada that pays about half of what everyone else pays for cellular service - thats Saskatchewan. Because Saskatchewan has a government-run cell carrier, SaskTel.
Canada just needs a federal crown corporation to offer cell service.
And before everyone starts, no, geography doesn't really make a huge difference in cost of providing the service. In remote rural areas you can get away with putting one tower up with LTE800 or another low frequency carrier, which will probably cover 20km in each direction from the cell site. Dense places are much more expensive to serve, requiring cell sites every <1km with a multitude of high and low frequency carriers.
However SaskTel charges $35/month for a 5GB data-only plan while Rogers charges $60. They also have a $90CAD 60GB plan which Rogers would charge checks notes $180 for.
So is it an objectively good deal, no. It is however half the national average.
I don't consider these plans unlimited; after the data allowance of 100GB speeds are shaped to <512kbit/sec which is close to unusable these days (some carriers in the UK offer similar but they consider it 'emergency' data to keep connected for basics, they wouldn't sell it as unlimited).
I think that's fair criticism. It's how this kind of plan is marketed all over North America. At one point Rogers marketed a 10MB plan as Unlimited like 10 years ago haha.
But this is a tiny, tiny distance in Canada... which has more rural roads than probably all of Europe.
Secondly, you can see how few towers SaskTel has here - https://www.sasktel.com/wps/wcm/connect/content/home/wireles... - click Saskatchewan LTE then show the various towers. Look how many towers are required for more "urban" areas in SK than the rural areas. These are pretty low density by european cities standards as well, where you can have small cells every 100m on busy streets.
In Saskatchewan and Alberta, it surprisingly is.
I'd say about 66% of the land area of Saskatchewan and Alberta has coverage on a mix of Bell, Telus and SaskTel. That's a ton of square footage.
Your statement is true of Canada in general, but not the prairies.
This shows a lack of understanding, for there are endless towers where no one lives.
Recall those roads I mentioned? Towers are there too. Rural roads can go through 100s of km of brush, farmland, tundra, and have towers.
1. https://www.comparecellular.ca/coverage-maps/ - "Less than 30 percent of Canada’s geographic area is covered by Bell, Rogers, or TELUS."
I agree, let's do it!
We also have a provincial auto insurer, SGI. The prices for car insurance in Alberta or Ontario are ludicrous in comparison. The power and natural gas crowns are decent, as far as I can tell.
https://twitter.com/wingkarli/status/1582019472315289601 > Canada is just five big banks, two grocery chains, and three telecom giants in a puffer down jacket.
I'm not sure if federal crowns would be any better, but some competition would be a start.
Alberta of course massively wealthy due to the fortunes springing up out of the ground, and over the years has been able to draw Canadians from all sorts of places at times where their own home province was relatively economically depressed.
Alberta also has a conservative political culture and some unique ideas around how to organize things that were particularly different from, as you said, the "let's work together" approach of Sask under visionary leader Tommy Douglas and those that followed that social democratic road map.
So I think you had a combination of Sask folks going to Alberta to work in the oil sands and picking up the politics and coming back with it, and the centralized conservative media touting Albertan success across the border as a road map for Saskachewan success.
Of course the reality is that Alberta's success likely has a lot a lot less to do with their political policy choices, and a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that they get absolutely ginormous oil royalties that funds their every budget wish.
Saskachewan trying to replicate what Alberta has via the policy side, without the resource royalty side, well they're not going to see the same outcomes.
I think this also reflected in their bimodal provincial politics. Unlike other province, there's just two teams, and they're the polar opposites (provincial NDP squarely on the left, UCP on the very-right for folks from outside Canada).
Canada Post Corporation exists, yet sending and receiving letters/parcels is expensive, slow, and often inconvenient throughout Canada.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation exists, yet the Canadian news and media landscape is severely lacking in quality (and in my experience, CBC typically has the lowest-quality content).
VIA Rail Canada Inc. exists, yet passenger rail travel is expensive, slow, inconvenient, and quite limited throughout Canada.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation exists, yet housing is incredibly expensive throughout Canada.
Yet another federal Crown corporation isn't the answer.
Very inexpensive and accessible, and private alternatives exist. Canada Post actually does a great job all things considered. Do you really think you can get a letter to Nunavut for $1.07 faster by private courier?
Canada Post topped Canada's Most Trusted Brands list in 2020. [2]
> The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation exists, yet the Canadian news and media landscape is severely lacking in quality (and in my experience, CBC typically has the lowest-quality content).
Completely disagree on that one, and entirely opinion.
> VIA Rail Canada Inc. exists, yet passenger rail travel is expensive, slow, inconvenient, and quite limited throughout Canada.
It's actually very inexpensive - you can get from Ottawa to Toronto for like $100 CAD round trip - but yes slower than it could be, because the government chose not to invest in it. However, it has recently, and HFR along the corridor is going to be a material improvement.
As is they are much cheaper than driving, faster than driving, waaaay cheaper than flying and sometimes faster.
That said they made the list of Canada's Most Trusted Brands in the Travel category in 2022 so obviously not everyone agrees. [1]
> Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation exists, yet housing is incredibly expensive throughout Canada.
The job of CMHC is not to make housing affordable. That's the job of municipalities and zoning rules. The job of CMHC is to finance homes which they do a fantastic job of.
This doesn't make any more sense than blaming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the high rent prices in San Francisco.
Really doesn't make sense to judge them on something that isn't their job.
> Yet another federal Crown corporation isn't the answer.
So why does Saskatchewan have cell service that costs half what everyone else is paying? Sounds like it might be.
What I would say is just like SaskTel in Saskatchewan, if you don't want to use it, don't sign up. But for me, I'd be onboard in a heartbeat and you'd love them too as they pushed down the cost of cellular service even if you chose not to. Rogers, Bell and Telus plans are similarly way cheaper in Saskatchewan because they have to actually compete for once.
[1] https://www.uvic.ca/gustavson/brandtrust/assets/docs/final--...
[2] https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/our-company/ab...
The alternatives to CBC is like CKNW 980 24/7 news radio that is of the "news entertainment" style of news; the sort purely designed to generate impressions by making you angry. noooo thx.
Canada Post is great, but it’s not cheap for anything except sending a letter.
If you're looking at shipping by say USPS, then International shipping rates are determined under the United Nations Universal Postal Union. [1]
Until like 2020 it would have cost you far less to send a package from China to the US than from the US to somewhere else in the US.
Comparing the cost of domestic to foreign international shipping prices is not reflective of anything, unfortunately.
I would strongly urge you to look again at the cost of FedEx/UPS/DHL shipments into Canada. If you're looking to send a parcel, by ground, you need to add at least like $25 for brokerage. If you're shipping express, you're paying at least $70 for the package, but at least it includes brokerage.
I think this is probably just not accurate.
I just priced a 5lb FedEx Small Box going from SF to Vancouver (800mi/1287km) and it came in at $180USD/244CAD for the cheapest option.
Shipping the same box by Canada Post from Ottawa to Winnipeg (1000mi-ish) came in at $47CAD for the same service tier. $58 to Vancouver.
Ground came in at $24 which is less than the brokerage charge alone would be going international.
> Canada Post is great, but it’s not cheap for anything except sending a letter.
That's probably because Canada is bigger than the United States in land mass and has the population of California. That makes it, therefore, expensive to ship things.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Univers...
UPS and Purolator have it working....FedEx is garbage, Canada Post sucks for parcels, Local couriers are nice because they are real people who call and attempt to actually deliver the package (who would think.....)
So some would say that's just a roundabout way of praising checks notes Canada Post.
This is for locations with no connectivity, where SpaceX satellites become very low-bandwidth Rogers towers for critical situations. Your examples are not relevant.
The rest of your post is just knee-jerk opposition luddism that doesn't apply at all.
What I'm wondering is how long it will be before we see a similar device/service for Starlink's network.
For low bandwidth applications like Swarm, perhaps a cheap 4g breakout board would work out-of-the-box with the right plan.
Also, the Starlink modems need a huge amount of power compared to the Swarm network, not really a similar application.
So for 300 USD + 15 USD / month, you can get a Garmin inReach Messenger
These RockBLOCK's are intended as a drop in comms module for remote embedded devices like weather stations.
https://docs.rockblock.rock7.com/docs/iridium-contract-costs
I posted a link to AST's recent first ever demonstration of an actual satellite to cell phone voice call, and it didnt even make it onto the IRC feed. I link here again:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230425005532/en/AST...
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/ast-spacemobile-first...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/someone-just-made-the-first-ev...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/first-ever-space-based-voice-...
This was an actual voice call between an unmodified cell phone and a satellite, not an announcement...
All these players are trying to secure deals right now[1]. They sent up more sats this year[2].
[1] https://lynk.world/news/lynk-and-vodafone-ghana-sign-contrac...
[2] https://lynk.world/news/lynk-launches-worlds-2nd-and-3rd-com...
I wish SpaceX would work with an independent group or consortium, rather than throw their power behind Rogers Communication. Fuck Rogers, they are part of the problem, and terrible for robust communications infrastructure
There are other companies such as Telus that have great coverage in rural areas, presumably because they're the ancestor of state owned BC Tel and have access to that great infrastructure.
So Rogers was faced with either having to duplicate the infrastructure that Telus already had, or do some innovative deal like this to bypass having to do that.
It all suggests that this is being done the wrong way, with great waste and cost, that all this infrastructure is a basic utility that should be done once by a state owned monopoly that is available for all to use, and several individual mobile phone companies can use it and pay for its upkeep.
How does this work? Do typical phones already have the hardware for this? The satellites emulate cells? (one big “cell”?)
Edit: Spotted a typo in my comment… but it’s actually a typo in the Reuters headline?
Which I suppose would be good for those very rural farmers. Maybe places along the west coast/milford/fiordland would def benefit from it. Guess it's one of those things we wait and see how it gets rolled out. And boaties I guess. Basically anyone who can't connect to fibre, and that fibre rollout is pretty extensive as it stands!
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/26/verizon-partnering-with-amaz...
Why have cell phones communicate with the SAT directly if you can just use the SATs to deploy "normal" cell towers?
They also have a spectrum sharing agreement with T-Mobile (which is how they're planning on offering this satellite-to-phone service in the US), maybe that'll expand to Starlink providing backhaul for more remote towers if it doesn't already cover that.
It's worth noting that this service is a "good enough" solution at the moment - SMS/app-based text messaging, maybe voice calls, and very limited data. As wireless standards continue to evolve, it'll become more helpful for modern use cases.
Edit: per another comment, this appears more benign than I though at first reading, though anything involving Roger's is a loss for Canadians https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35719151
This sounds like the same deal SpaceX and T-Mobile have in the US, where Starlink satellites will be providing direct cell coverage to phones for basic SMS and voice call capability in remote areas.
This is separate from the Starlink home internet service which uses a dedicated phased array antenna for broadband speeds.