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I think it's far more difficult to build a competitive network in Canada vs the US. Canada is as big as the US, but has 1/10th the population. Building and main

I think it's far more difficult to build a competitive network in Canada vs the US. Canada is as big as the US, but has 1/10th the population. Building and maintaining infrastructure for low-density population areas is extremely capital intensive. I am not saying the existing Telco oligopoly is a good or ideal situation. Just mentioning that US and Canada have some differences in this regard

Scoundreller 6y ago
Most of the low-density population areas aren't covered anyway. By landmass, it's single-digit percentages or low double-digit percentages of coverage (And often it's weak outside of urban/suburban area). One of the least dense provinces, Saskatchewan, has some of the best pricing in the country because the government has yet to selloff the provincial telecom to private investors. Manitoba too before they decided to privatize and sell off to an incumbent. And high-density is no panacea for cost. Tall concrete buildings everywhere can mean more infrastructure costs. Especially if regulations require you to fit infrastructure into the facade. Medium-density is the least engineering: Just put up a tower and call it a day. And in Canada, antenna permits are federal. Once issued, local govs can't stop you from putting up your monstrosity of white panels on a midrise or a big metal antenna. But you don't have to just compare Canada against the USA. Australia or Iceland have rates that Canadians can only dream of, with similarly geo-population situations.
- SuperPaintMan 6y ago
  There's a reason we fight hard for our crown corperations out here in Saskatchewan, if this was left to the market we would be screwed. The farther away from populated centers you get, the harder it is to get decent service however. I grew up out in Melville, SK where the fastest connections at the time were 15mbps DSL connections (this was around the time that Google Fiber was starting to roll out elsewhere). Once you get farther out, copper isn't even an option so cellular and satellite links are needed. The only nice thing about fiber is digging up ditches is relatively cheap Some of us are excited to see how systems such as StarLink develop, maybe bringing decent rural access to the network is in the cards. Next time you make a page that requires 10Mb of assets before loading, please remember there are people dealing with terrible connections. I know my first 100mbps connection was a godsend.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  +1 for SaskTel. I've done work for them on their monitoring systems, seemed like a decent org. More imporatanly, as someone in AB I am jealous of their cheap phone plans... > Australia or Iceland have rates that Canadians can only dream of, with similarly geo-population situations I worked on the NBN in Australia -- they've got their fair share of ISP-related issues down under.
kevin_nisbet 6y ago
I agree with you in concept, but I don't know that the geography fully explains the discrepancy. As an example, there are government incentives to do the build out to more rural areas, but that might be true in the US as well. We also tried to implement more carriers several years ago, with a wireless spectrum auction that reserved spectrum for new entrants. These startups tried to focus solely on urban areas with their build outs, and then could roam on the big 3, but struggled immensely. IIRC, one of the big complaints was we don't allow foreign ownership, which made it difficult to raise the immense capital needed for a proper build out. How much that plays into it I don't know, but unless Canadians want to put together a massive amount of capital it seems unlikely to force stronger competition.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  Wind mobile was doomed because they were issued 1.7ghz spectrum. That’s going to make any urban-area buildout prohibitively expensive because it doesn’t penetrate well.
  - smachiz 6y ago
    That's actually the inverse of the problem. Yes, 1.7Ghz doesn't penetrate well, but in cities you want density, because you have population density. Low band is still useful, but not nearly as advantaged as in rural areas. In rural areas, using 1.7Ghz vs 600Mhz or 700Mhz spectrum means building 4x the amount of towers to cover the same square miles. That's opex, capex *4. It's really expensive, with no benefits at all as you're not capacity constrained at all on radios/spectrum in rural areas.
DarthGhandi 6y ago
Canadian and US urbanisation rates are essentially identical. This isn't a case of looking at a map and population count whatsoever. It's an incredibly moot point when you look at where 95% of people live in both countries.
- snowwindwaves 6y ago
  Coverage coast to coast along highways is the same distance but 1/10 the Canadians?
deepspace 6y ago
Australia has similar population size and density issues as Canada, and yet they manage to provide plans at 1/2 the price we pay here.
sumedh 6y ago
Australia is similar as well, most of the population is in few cities with huge empty outback. The rates here are around 25 USD for unlimited text and calls with around 30 gigs of data.
- Reason077 6y ago
  Right now in the UK I’m paying £30/month for unlimited 5G data. 30 day contract, 5G roaming in many European countries. I’ve seen download speeds as high as 400 Mbps. Streaming games on my Mac from Google Stadia in perfect lag-free 1080p!
  - linker3000 6y ago
    Right now in the UK I’m paying £8/month for 7GB 4G data, 30 day contract, EU roaming, unlimited calls and texts (Plusnet, SIM only). Which works for me because I am mostly on wifi or (current situation notwithstanding) on a very short commute.
    - Reason077 6y ago
      In my case, 5G is my WiFi! With the added benefit of being a battery-powered router (Huawei E6878) which I can take with me for fast WiFi wherever I need it. Why pay extra for wired broadband? (7GB data would be no good at all for me - I'd burn through that in about 30 minutes!)
    - kingosticks 6y ago
      Wow, thanks for that. I just realised I was still paying £9.50 a month to Plusnet for much less. Took just 2 minutes to login and update the tariff (reduced the data too since I no longer have a commute). I wish they'd do this automatically but obviously it's not in their interests.
      - nicoburns 6y ago
        Giffgaff is really good about actually getting you on to a plan that suits you. They'll automatically update you to the latest plan at the price point you've set. They'll email you suggesting cheaper plan if you're not using all/most of your allowance. I've even had them gift me an extra GB of data when I went over my plan's allowance.
Reason077 6y ago
> ”Building and maintaining infrastructure for low-density population areas is extremely capital intensive.” The solution is to share infrastructure in sparsely populated areas where it would be uneconomic for each operator to build it's own. The UK, despite being vastly smaller and denser than Canada, has long had poor mobile coverage in rural areas. The UK government is now requiring (and contributing funding towards) geographical 95% coverage by 2026. Operators will use shared rural infrastructure to achieve this. https://www.mobileuk.org/shared-rural-network https://www.mobileuk.org/shared-rural-network https://www.gov.uk/government/news/shared-rural-network https://www.gov.uk/government/news/shared-rural-network

Scoundreller 6y ago

Most of the low-density population areas aren't covered anyway. By landmass, it's single-digit percentages or low double-digit percentages of coverage (And often it's weak outside of urban/suburban area). One of the least dense provinces, Saskatchewan, has some of the best pricing in the country because the government has yet to selloff the provincial telecom to private investors. Manitoba too before they decided to privatize and sell off to an incumbent. And high-density is no panacea for cost. Tall concrete buildings everywhere can mean more infrastructure costs. Especially if regulations require you to fit infrastructure into the facade. Medium-density is the least engineering: Just put up a tower and call it a day. And in Canada, antenna permits are federal. Once issued, local govs can't stop you from putting up your monstrosity of white panels on a midrise or a big metal antenna. But you don't have to just compare Canada against the USA. Australia or Iceland have rates that Canadians can only dream of, with similarly geo-population situations.

SuperPaintMan 6y ago
There's a reason we fight hard for our crown corperations out here in Saskatchewan, if this was left to the market we would be screwed. The farther away from populated centers you get, the harder it is to get decent service however. I grew up out in Melville, SK where the fastest connections at the time were 15mbps DSL connections (this was around the time that Google Fiber was starting to roll out elsewhere). Once you get farther out, copper isn't even an option so cellular and satellite links are needed. The only nice thing about fiber is digging up ditches is relatively cheap Some of us are excited to see how systems such as StarLink develop, maybe bringing decent rural access to the network is in the cards. Next time you make a page that requires 10Mb of assets before loading, please remember there are people dealing with terrible connections. I know my first 100mbps connection was a godsend.
blaser-waffle 6y ago
+1 for SaskTel. I've done work for them on their monitoring systems, seemed like a decent org. More imporatanly, as someone in AB I am jealous of their cheap phone plans... > Australia or Iceland have rates that Canadians can only dream of, with similarly geo-population situations I worked on the NBN in Australia -- they've got their fair share of ISP-related issues down under.

kevin_nisbet 6y ago

I agree with you in concept, but I don't know that the geography fully explains the discrepancy. As an example, there are government incentives to do the build out to more rural areas, but that might be true in the US as well. We also tried to implement more carriers several years ago, with a wireless spectrum auction that reserved spectrum for new entrants. These startups tried to focus solely on urban areas with their build outs, and then could roam on the big 3, but struggled immensely. IIRC, one of the big complaints was we don't allow foreign ownership, which made it difficult to raise the immense capital needed for a proper build out. How much that plays into it I don't know, but unless Canadians want to put together a massive amount of capital it seems unlikely to force stronger competition.

Scoundreller 6y ago
Wind mobile was doomed because they were issued 1.7ghz spectrum. That’s going to make any urban-area buildout prohibitively expensive because it doesn’t penetrate well.
- smachiz 6y ago
  That's actually the inverse of the problem. Yes, 1.7Ghz doesn't penetrate well, but in cities you want density, because you have population density. Low band is still useful, but not nearly as advantaged as in rural areas. In rural areas, using 1.7Ghz vs 600Mhz or 700Mhz spectrum means building 4x the amount of towers to cover the same square miles. That's opex, capex *4. It's really expensive, with no benefits at all as you're not capacity constrained at all on radios/spectrum in rural areas.

DarthGhandi 6y ago

Canadian and US urbanisation rates are essentially identical. This isn't a case of looking at a map and population count whatsoever. It's an incredibly moot point when you look at where 95% of people live in both countries.

snowwindwaves 6y ago
Coverage coast to coast along highways is the same distance but 1/10 the Canadians?

deepspace 6y ago

Australia has similar population size and density issues as Canada, and yet they manage to provide plans at 1/2 the price we pay here.

sumedh 6y ago

Australia is similar as well, most of the population is in few cities with huge empty outback. The rates here are around 25 USD for unlimited text and calls with around 30 gigs of data.

Reason077 6y ago
Right now in the UK I’m paying £30/month for unlimited 5G data. 30 day contract, 5G roaming in many European countries. I’ve seen download speeds as high as 400 Mbps. Streaming games on my Mac from Google Stadia in perfect lag-free 1080p!
- linker3000 6y ago
  Right now in the UK I’m paying £8/month for 7GB 4G data, 30 day contract, EU roaming, unlimited calls and texts (Plusnet, SIM only). Which works for me because I am mostly on wifi or (current situation notwithstanding) on a very short commute.
  - Reason077 6y ago
    In my case, 5G is my WiFi! With the added benefit of being a battery-powered router (Huawei E6878) which I can take with me for fast WiFi wherever I need it. Why pay extra for wired broadband? (7GB data would be no good at all for me - I'd burn through that in about 30 minutes!)
  - kingosticks 6y ago
    Wow, thanks for that. I just realised I was still paying £9.50 a month to Plusnet for much less. Took just 2 minutes to login and update the tariff (reduced the data too since I no longer have a commute). I wish they'd do this automatically but obviously it's not in their interests.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      Giffgaff is really good about actually getting you on to a plan that suits you. They'll automatically update you to the latest plan at the price point you've set. They'll email you suggesting cheaper plan if you're not using all/most of your allowance. I've even had them gift me an extra GB of data when I went over my plan's allowance.

Reason077 6y ago

> ”Building and maintaining infrastructure for low-density population areas is extremely capital intensive.” The solution is to share infrastructure in sparsely populated areas where it would be uneconomic for each operator to build it's own. The UK, despite being vastly smaller and denser than Canada, has long had poor mobile coverage in rural areas. The UK government is now requiring (and contributing funding towards) geographical 95% coverage by 2026. Operators will use shared rural infrastructure to achieve this. https://www.mobileuk.org/shared-rural-network https://www.mobileuk.org/shared-rural-network https://www.gov.uk/government/news/shared-rural-network https://www.gov.uk/government/news/shared-rural-network