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Universal high-speed internet essential: Liberals

HavokFour

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Universal high-speed internet essential: Liberals

The federal government should provide funding to ensure high-speed internet access is available for all Canadians to subscribe to, says the Liberal technology critic.

"All Canadians should have equal opportunity to succeed, no matter where they live," Marc Garneau told the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Tuesday. "Without universal access to high-speed internet, this cannot be achieved."

Garneau said a download speed of at least 1.5 megabits per second should be in place across the country by 2014.

The commission is holding hearings on whether broadband internet should be declared a basic service that needs to be regulated like basic phone service.

Garneau, the industry, science and technology critic for the Liberal party and the MP for the Montreal riding of Westmount-Ville Marie, said he believes high-speed access must be part of basic service.

He added that the government should contribute $500 million over three years to achieve the 2014 target for universal access — something his party would do if elected. He added that his party would also be willing to consider a goal of 4 megabits per second by 2020. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission set that as its universal access target in the National Broadband Plan submitted to Congress in March.

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Honestly I hope it happens. Right now we're paying about $45 for half that speed, and I am tired of Rogers d*cking around with contracts. It's absolutely ridiculous we only have the choice between Rogers or Bell for high-speed internet in Orleans.

EDIT: By "we" I mean my household.
 
I thought we were a freemarket?  Government sponsored business is doomed to fail.  Or is this another "right"?
 
Technoviking said:
I thought we were a freemarket?  Government sponsored business is doomed to fail.  Or is this another "right"?

I would argue that in a high tech economy, having universal high speed internet access should actually be considered to be essential infrastructure for individual or business enterprise. I don't consider it outlandish for the government to help establish the initial basic infrastructure. People can then choose to pay user fees for service. Communications infrastructure can be as essential today as roads.
 
Also, I'd love to see them look into the retarded pricing put in effect by all the major ISPs.

I'm all for >25mbit speeds that are offered to most people now a days.. but when I can burn through the caps in a few hours, I ask what's the point?

In a time when digital downloads of most stuff in common-place (itunes/steam/netflix/etc) this is unacceptable.

Internet and Cell Phone plans are the only things that increase in price as the technology becomes cheaper.
 
BobSlob said:
Also, I'd love to see them look into the retarded pricing put in effect by all the major ISPs.

I'm all for >25mbit speeds that are offered to most people now a days.. but when I can burn through the caps in a few hours, I ask what's the point?

In a time when digital downloads of most stuff in common-place (itunes/steam/netflix/etc) this is unacceptable.

Internet and Cell Phone plans are the only things that increase in price as the technology becomes cheaper.

All of this are market issues......not government issues.
 
Agreed, but they have no issue diving into other industries, namely oil and power

 
Communications systems, like utilities, lend themselves very poorly to a free market system unless there is already a substantial neutral infrastructure available.

We saw the same thing with Cable television.

The only place there is any real competition or investment is in major urban centers, and the amount of reliance on borrowing or renting infrastructure from the large regional monopolies lends itself very poorly to any real sort of competition for smaller startups.

I'm not saying that Canada needs to go gung-ho building communications infrastructure, but if you say "The market will take care of it", you need to realize that you're saying "If you live in a small town, tough bananas". There's just no incentive to provide better service when the infrastructure costs are that high.
 
HavokFour said:
Honestly I hope it happens. Right now we're paying about $45 for half that speed, and I am tired of Rogers d*cking around with contracts. It's absolutely ridiculous we only have the choice between Rogers or Bell for high-speed internet in Orleans.

You don't. If you want DSL, theoretically any DSL wholesaler (Read: Small companies) can provide you DSL access to your phone line provided you're within range of a central office. My father works for a wholesaler based out of Kingston, and they have customers in Toronto and Ottawa who moved there, but wanted to stay with the company.
 
Technoviking said:
I thought we were a freemarket?  Government sponsored business is doomed to fail.  Or is this another "right"?

Government investment in this kind of infrastructure that can help increase the efficiency of all companies and individuals makes a lot more sense than spending it on building new arenas, gazebos and other "infrastructure" that doesn't directly help the long-term economy.
 
When the Liberals get elected, go ahead, do it. Staff the department with all the (hopefully) fired VAC Public Servants, DM's, etc.

If you thought Rogers, Shaw was dicking you around........
 
Petrocanada, CN, etc. They seem to have done very well with gov part ownership - of course, there are exceptions in the airlines industry...
Rogers, bell, Shaw, etc. are all still benefiting from gov intervention (CRTC) - there is no free market there yet.
when there is, dealing with Rogers' customer support would be almost enjoyable and their contracts will not be written in a etch-a-sketch.

In Latin America I can buy a sim for $1 and air time for $5 - here you need a contract in most cases.

internet, there is some competition in the major urban centres. In the end, most comms go through Bell's infrastructure at one point or another (or the regional counterparts: Sasktell, NB, etc.) and they control the price of admission.
"Free market" is great (and I benefit from it daily) but it is not panacea.

cheers,
Frank
 
PanaEng said:
In Latin America I can buy a sim for $1 and air time for $5 - here you need a contract in most cases.

cheers,
Frank

Yup, and most Afghans make about a buck a day, if lucky, but they all have cell phones.
 
What a f*cking dolt.  People get by without more basic services such as paved roads, water, sewer, and other utilities.  I doubt a high-speed gaming, gossip, and pr0n connection is an essential service.  Get a clue, Garneau - few people are using high-speed internet to earn degrees from prestigious institutions.
 
I suspect this is driven by special pleading from the telcoms, and backed by studies such as these.

While there is reason to believe that better communications does increase productivity, I doubt this will have the order of magnitude effects suggested here, unless there are otehr unspoken assumptions such as sending large CAD files via Internet to CNC machines or 3D printers in distant factories. While that might become a common practice in the next decade or so, it would make sense for companies that do that to have their own dedicated lines, if only to lock out the competition.
 
Commercial needs are a cost of business, just like stationery - to be paid for by the business.
 
Lets not forget the Liberals promised to bring fibre-optics to all of Canada, but that never happened on their watch either. In the decade there were in they had lot’s of opportunity to promote this and the concept of "Connecting Canada” was part of their party platforms, they made noises, created an office and then gutted the money when no one was looking. I am sure the carcass is floating around some Ottawa office today.

Government does Infrastructure well, case in point would you take Decca over GPS? In Canada mapping data is all copyrighted (save the 20-30yr old topo’s), where as in the US mapping data is provided free of charge by the US Geological Service, which is why the base maps in your Garmin are way better in the US , than here. BC Hydro was a amalgamation of several private utilities and that worked well for the taxpayer and became a cash cow for government.
Some of the recent Infrastructure money did go to building better internet accessibility.

Sometimes there is not enough demand to get business to take the risk, yet when the investiture is there, business will come. similar to a hydro line i am reviewing, government is building a line that can accommodate many users into an area with lots of potential mines and other projects. Having the government pay for the line means the other project then become viable.
 
Thucydides said:
While there is reason to believe that better communications does increase productivity, I doubt this will have the order of magnitude effects suggested here, unless there are otehr unspoken assumptions such as sending large CAD files via Internet to CNC machines or 3D printers in distant factories. While that might become a common practice in the next decade or so, it would make sense for companies that do that to have their own dedicated lines, if only to lock out the competition.

Working in the natural resource sector I work almost entirely in rural communities.  Large CAD files or GIS files are a common occurance and have been increasing in use exponentially due to the ability to merge data sets.  In addition the lower costs of aerial and satellite imagery of quality means that instead of hand colored maps of 10-15 years ago through Canada Post I'm now getting applications with all possible routing, imagery and supporting PDF documentation via e-mail.  All disposition application and surveys for usuage of Alberta Crown Lands are submitted electroniclly and have been for 2 years now.

Digital photographs are another major change where the low cost of digitial cameras and increased quality of image has meant that images I sent 3 years ago at 1-2 MB/photo are now 3-4 MB/photo plus I'm asked for more aspects/overview shots.  Again e-mail is the means of exchange.

Working on GIS work is used to be a specialist position and you had the software loaded onto your computer.  Now it's all floating licenses and remote CITRIX log-ins via internet and its very easy to bog down even the "SuperNet" here in Alberta working with those programs.

Useage of the internet aside one of the biggest issues is that most companies can not afford to run dedicated lines to each mill.  At 200km from Edmonton I'm the closest I've been to a major center in years yet I can't imagine the cost of running multiple, company specific lines for the 7 forest companies I work with locally.  Plus all the oil and gas, coal mines, peat operations, grazing, gravel, recreation.... 

Under the current service provided I've lived 200m away from the main SuperNet Telus line and yet have been told that there are no plans to provide high-speed service to the community due to a lack of people.  Satelitte service was only available for about 50% of the people in that community due to topography and rely stations which meant that most either had dial-up or no service as a result.  $400/month for satellite at a slower speed that high-speed at $40/month or dial-up at $40/month....ugly situation and someone pays for those costs trickling down.  In some cases it has limited where work can be done due to the requirement for highspeed work so you pay for setting up the office in a city yet paying camp costs to get the field work done...not cheap.


Government does Infrastructure well, case in point would you take Decca over GPS? In Canada mapping data is all copyrighted (save the 20-30yr old topo’s), where as in the US mapping data is provided free of charge by the US Geological Service, which is why the base maps in your Garmin are way better in the US , than here. BC Hydro was a amalgamation of several private utilities and that worked well for the taxpayer and became a cash cow for government.

Digital data sets and standards vary widely and frankly are pretty embarrassing when looking at other jurisdications.  When working in Northern Ontario we used to go to the states to get maps of the areas we'd be working in as they had better maps than the province who owned the resource.  Unfortunatly at least in Alberta the province does not own any digitial information due to previous privatization work so major issue sharing updates and combining information with the neighboring provinces/federal level. 

Either way, once people start working with it and accepting the usage of digital information it starts to be an expectation of the public.  How many people use Google Earth compared to 5 years ago...

Not sure where we'll be in 10 years but now with the iPAD and some of the applications in command and control scenarios I've seen don't write nationwide highspeed off yet if we're serious about taking ownership of our land.
 
foresterab said:
Useage of the internet aside one of the biggest issues is that most companies can not afford to run dedicated lines to each mill.  At 200km from Edmonton I'm the closest I've been to a major center in years yet I can't imagine the cost of running multiple, company specific lines for the 7 forest companies I work with locally.  Plus all the oil and gas, coal mines, peat operations, grazing, gravel, recreation.... 

What you are describing is a market opportunity for whoever wants to fulfill the needs of these users. High speed fiber is the way we are familiar with, but who is to say this isn't the only way to transfer data at high speed? In another thread I posted an article on some pretty freaky DSL and ADSL tricks using ordinary twisted pair wires, as well as various high bandwidth wireless technologies. New network or compression protocols and algorithms might also be developed to meet the need of sending more data over existing infrastructure. Users who see the need for these large datasets can also opt to pay extra for dedicated lines.

The real problem with government building this sort of infrastructure is they are not neutral parties, and could easily steer the investment in infrastructure to meet partisan goals not connected to the economic demand for such service. Bridges to nowhere are still wastes of valuable resources when they are virtual as when they are built out of concrete and steel.
 
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