The province I live in, Alberta, had a similar problem getting rural communities online. There are a few dozen independent wireless ISPs that cover most of the

The province I live in, Alberta, had a similar problem getting rural communities online. There are a few dozen independent wireless ISPs that cover most of the smaller towns, but the sticking point was getting a decent backbone connection out that far. The phone company was basically never going to turn a profit on rural service, so the government eventually paid to trench out >10,000km of fibre and build point-to-point wireless links: http://www.servicealberta.ca/AlbertaSuperNet.cfm http://www.servicealberta.ca/AlbertaSuperNet.cfm