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Comment by xattt | Hacker News Reader

Cell phone coverage has been abysmal in my part of the world, to the point where 911 calls can be unreliable (1).

(1) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-cell...

The telecom situation in Canada is ridiculous. Even in Greater Vancouver, the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Canada and the 34th in North America, there are dead zones everywhere with major providers. I'm in a suburban development that was mostly built in the last 5-10 years, and there still aren't any towers near here so my bedroom and foyer have no reception (not 1 bar, I mean my phone says "no service, you must be in the wilderness"). I have to stand by a window to make calls. And this is a wood-frame building on flat terrain, next to two major highways.

Telus, Bell and Rogers are ingrained in the minds of Canadians as the only options.

Almost all attempts to change that over the years have failed or have not been able to get sufficent market penetration to become self funding for rapid growth.

Canadian investment funds would rather go and buy U.S. ISPs from failing ventures like Frontier (creating Ziply Fiber) than investing in Canada because they know how bad the situation is. Getting sub-30% market penetration when offering, better, less expensive fiber internet makes the Canadian market uneconomical for deeper investment by insurgent ISPs.

The Canadian consumer is easily swayed by Bell/Telus/Rogers propoganda like https://web.archive.org/web/20140402040045/http://fairforcan...

Cell phone coverage in many places is just horrible. You might get good coverage and signal quality, but the network just can't follow when everybody is watching youtube at 4K resolution on their mobile connection. Sometimes even regular phone calls become unreliable (bad sound, interruptions) despite the optimal signal level.

Available IP bandwidth at end-user points has absolutely nothing to do with 911.

911 is an entirely different class of service.

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