Canada Says High-Speed Internet Is 'Necessary To The Quality of Life For Canadians'

[Guest]

Canada's government announced that it now considers broadband internet a basic telecommunications service to which all Canadians should have access.

Canada Says High-Speed Internet Is 'Necessary To The Quality of Life For Canadians' : Read more

 

[LORD_ORION]

I am in a major urban centre, I can't get 50mbps dsl because I am just the right distance from the hub to get 15mbps only.

Many people are in the same situation... why? Because Bell is cheap and they didn't lay out their network topology properly for maximum connectivity. They laid it out to turn a profit.

The double kick in the nutz is that Bell did this on the pax payers dime.
Go Canada!

 

[gggplaya]

50mbps/10mpbs up is not a "basic necessity", that's simply retarded. That's actually a very nice and respectable speed to have, not a BASIC necessity.

Basic would mean that your kids can do their homework, research, get the news, apply for jobs online, and watch web videos at maybe 720p with little to no buffering.

Being able to watch 4-5 1080p netflix streams at the same time is a luxury.

 

[RomeoReject]

If there's any smaller companies in your area, use 'em. I'm in a small town (30,000) fairly close to Vancouver, yet I have two Gigabit options, four smaller companies who don't reach Gigabit speeds, along with the big three. In literally every metric I looked at, the big three were almost always the slowest, but the most expensive.

 

[ko888]

The CRTC also said that we Canadians pay almost twice as much for each 1Mbps than Americans pay.

 

[MWilly]

Well as long as we will be sending Canada Whoopi, and Barbara,and half of Hollywood I guess we could throw in Comcast too.

 

[gdmaclew]

The CRTC is only solving half of the problems.
They refused to address the outrageously high cost of wireless Internet (LTE).
Rogers and Bell have got such a monopoly no wonder prices are still high.
$110 Cdn for 20-50 GB.
Although they did say that there should be no caps for home Internet. That might help but I'm not
holding my breath.


http://www.rogers.com/consumer/wireless/mobile-internet-plans?ipn=1

 

[Verrin]

Good luck getting any providers to pay even a cent of this. As long as the tax payers fund it, they're fine with it. But as soon as you threaten their profit margins, we'll be lucky if it only gets tied up in legal disputes for the foreseeable future.

Both Bell and Rogers are notorious for being the worst for putting the priority of customer satisfaction on the bottom of their list of things that matter.

 

[lun471k]

I live in the North of Quebec province. The only two options I have are Cablevision and Télébec, they both belong to Bell Alliant. I pay 83$/mo for 20mbps download and 1.5mbps upload.

This change won't affect the prices, but at least my Internet will stop freezing my cloud backup solutions start running (Dropbox, Google Photos, Drive, etc.). Can't wait for a 10mbps upload solution.

 

[popatim]

Well that should double everyone Canadian's internet bill real soon...
Someones got to pay for all that and 750mill is only a dent

 

[Marc_46]

The CRTC (a political organisation ruling telecommunications in Canada) artificially hikes the telecommunication prices. It makes a lot more expensive than most western countries. Plus, they use our tax money to rule to their advantage.

 

[canadianvice]

However, in classic Canadian fashion, this isn't actually going to mean anything. Until prices are reasonable vis-a-vis service, then it's not really declaring anything new...

 

[CRITICALThinker]

I have only 26 down and 6 up, which is likely a 30 and 7 package (parents bundled it with TV) so this will be interesting. I wonder how long it will take before these changes are implemented... Almost over the cap already

 

[Kruelness]

I live in Edmonton Alberta. ( it's a city for those who don't know what is North of the 49 the parallel).
I'm paying $70 CAD, so about $50 USD for 150 Mbps down and 25 Mbps up. Although those in the prairies are stuck , usually, with crappy satellite internet.

 

[redeye]

The big deal is they have to offer an unlimited option!... then the LTE option becomes bearable in the farm country etc... wireless fixed internet

 

[mac_angel]

nothing about changing the prices. Canada rates are some of the worst in the world, for both internet and mobile phones.

 

[velocityg4]

I live in Edmonton Alberta. ( it's a city for those who don't know what is North of the 49 the parallel).
I'm paying $70 CAD, so about $50 USD for 150 Mbps down and 25 Mbps up. Although those in the prairies are stuck , usually, with crappy satellite internet.

That's a great deal. In my area it is $80 USD for 90/20 Mbps with a 1TB soft data cap. The population density where I live is nearly double Edmonton (243 per square km vs 123 per square km). I'm in Atlanta, GA (out in the suburbs).

It's ridiculous since these companies are given a monopoly by the government. Then everyone cries free market and no interference whenever there is discussion on regulating their rates or settings speed/data standards.

I'm all for the free market, if there is competition readily available. Otherwise if they want to be granted monopoly status. Then they should be required to continually improve service and be limited to a 5% profit margin.

 

[StonedGamer]

I am in a major urban centre, I can't get 50mbps dsl because I am just the right distance from the hub to get 15mbps only.

Many people are in the same situation... why? Because Bell is cheap and they didn't lay out their network topology properly for maximum connectivity. They laid it out to turn a profit.

The double kick in the nutz is that Bell did this on the pax payers dime.
Go Canada!

God Damn! Accidentally downvoted, my bad, I totally agree!

 

[falchard]

I think the big change will be DOCSIS 3.1. Ten gig speeds out of existing cable networks. There will be some companies holding off for it, and some offering a hybrid solution before then.

 

[wifiburger]

why bother ? if you live in Canada you already know internet is run by 3 big companies , they over charge for garbage speed in major cites where they already have infrastructure

 

[SockPuppet]

I get 130 down and 10 up for $45 a month. Go Comcast!

 

[falchard]

Right now I get 300 down and 50 up on Cox for around $100.

 

[CerianK]

50 Mbps download can only stream about two 4K videos simultaneously... with little bandwidth left over for satisfying basic 'Quality of Life' when those two streaming hogs (you know who you are!) are already active in the same house.

Seriously, people. That being said, I'm still anxious to get on DOCSIS 3.1 (since I'm one of the aforementioned 'hogs').

 

[falchard]

DOCSIS 3.1 is still like 5~10 years out. They came out with the standard years ago, but it usually takes the ISPs a good decade to adopt the standard.

 

[Memhorder]

aww man that's good to hear. Living out in the Rural area you don't have many choices. 50 Mbs and 10 Mbs is a dream. Get exactly half that in my county for big $$$