7 ms·

This doesn't really solve a problem anyone had that fixed location Starlink and Rogers' LTE network didn't solve already, and I would rather have bought a non-R

This doesn't really solve a problem anyone had that fixed location Starlink and Rogers' LTE network didn't solve already, and I would rather have bought a non-Rogers account, as the telcos here are oligarchs. Post pandemic, high speed in rural areas has been great for working from home, and bringing some new money into dying towns, but from a conservation perspective, I think the deal is an environmental disaster. Even though I'm sure it's nice for people to be able to post selfies from national parks, it will also exacerbate a growing tension between rural residents and the increasing number of tourists who mainly loiter in their cars and beside the road, have tailgates on peoples lawns, tresspass, and make a general nuissance of themselves - as distinct from hikers, campers, and trippers who are there to appreciate remote areas instead of merely using them as a platform for their instagram photos.

arcticbull 4y ago
> ... as the telcos here are oligarchs. There's one part of Canada that pays about half of what everyone else pays for cellular service - thats Saskatchewan. Because Saskatchewan has a government-run cell carrier, SaskTel. Canada just needs a federal crown corporation to offer cell service.
- martinald 4y ago
  Is this considered a good deal? 100GB data on SaskTel for $140/month? In the UK you can get that for ~£10/month, $17CAD. And before everyone starts, no, geography doesn't really make a huge difference in cost of providing the service. In remote rural areas you can get away with putting one tower up with LTE800 or another low frequency carrier, which will probably cover 20km in each direction from the cell site. Dense places are much more expensive to serve, requiring cell sites every <1km with a multitude of high and low frequency carriers.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    I'm not sure I see a 100GB plan on their website, a link might be useful. However SaskTel charges $35/month for a 5GB data-only plan while Rogers charges $60. They also have a $90CAD 60GB plan which Rogers would charge checks notes $180 for. So is it an objectively good deal, no. It is however half the national average.
    - martinald 4y ago
      https://www.sasktel.com/store/browse/Personal/Wireless/Rate-plans/_/N-2777 https://www.sasktel.com/store/browse/Personal/Wireless/Rate-... - click 100GB. I don't consider these plans unlimited; after the data allowance of 100GB speeds are shaped to <512kbit/sec which is close to unusable these days (some carriers in the UK offer similar but they consider it 'emergency' data to keep connected for basics, they wouldn't sell it as unlimited).
      - arcticbull 4y ago
        > I don't consider these plans unlimited; I think that's fair criticism. It's how this kind of plan is marketed all over North America. At one point Rogers marketed a 10MB plan as Unlimited like 10 years ago haha.
  - b112 4y ago
    20km in each direction from the cell site. But this is a tiny, tiny distance in Canada... which has more rural roads than probably all of Europe.
    - martinald 4y ago
      Firstly, the majority of Canada's geography is not covered by cell service given the population lives in such a small percentage of it. Secondly, you can see how few towers SaskTel has here - https://www.sasktel.com/wps/wcm/connect/content/home/wireless/coverage-and-travel/coverage-travel https://www.sasktel.com/wps/wcm/connect/content/home/wireles... - click Saskatchewan LTE then show the various towers. Look how many towers are required for more "urban" areas in SK than the rural areas. These are pretty low density by european cities standards as well, where you can have small cells every 100m on busy streets.
      - arcticbull 4y ago
        > Firstly, the majority of Canada's geography is not covered by cell service given the population lives in such a small percentage of it. In Saskatchewan and Alberta, it surprisingly is. I'd say about 66% of the land area of Saskatchewan and Alberta has coverage on a mix of Bell, Telus and SaskTel. That's a ton of square footage. Your statement is true of Canada in general, but not the prairies. https://www.cellularmaps.com/regions/canada-coverage.shtml https://www.cellularmaps.com/regions/canada-coverage.shtml
      - b112 4y ago
        Firstly, the majority of Canada's geography is not covered by cell service given the population lives in such a small percentage of it. This shows a lack of understanding, for there are endless towers where no one lives. Recall those roads I mentioned? Towers are there too. Rural roads can go through 100s of km of brush, farmland, tundra, and have towers.
        martinald 4y ago
        The majority of Canada's landmass does not have cell service[1]. That is a fact. That doesn't mean the same as there is no coverage if people don't live there. 1. https://www.comparecellular.ca/coverage-maps/ https://www.comparecellular.ca/coverage-maps/ - "Less than 30 percent of Canada’s geographic area is covered by Bell, Rogers, or TELUS."
- ryanmentor 4y ago
  This is a wild take that actually makes too much sense. I agree, let's do it!
- rikthevik 4y ago
  I'm a Saskatchewan resident. It's easy to grumble about the phone company, but Sasktel does a great job. We're a huge low-density province, but with the crown corp mandates, small towns in Saskatchewan have excellent cell and fibre service. There's no way a private company invests like that. Saskatchewan gets better and faster service for less money. We also have a provincial auto insurer, SGI. The prices for car insurance in Alberta or Ontario are ludicrous in comparison. The power and natural gas crowns are decent, as far as I can tell. https://twitter.com/wingkarli/status/1582019472315289601 https://twitter.com/wingkarli/status/1582019472315289601 > Canada is just five big banks, two grocery chains, and three telecom giants in a puffer down jacket. I'm not sure if federal crowns would be any better, but some competition would be a start.
  - Tiktaalik 4y ago
    It's really sad how other provinces sold off their crown corps to their detriment and even Sask, long a leader in this area, has turned away from these sort of policies in recent years.
    - rikthevik 4y ago
      Saskatchewan politics don't make a lot of sense to me. I'm not sure how the "let's work together" mentality that gave us the Co-op, the Wheat Pool, and Medicare turned into a "fuck you, I got mine" mentality.
      - Tiktaalik 4y ago
        I think it is sadly a result of influence of their lucky and wealthy neighbour Alberta and trying to replicate that success using misguided cargo cult methods. Alberta of course massively wealthy due to the fortunes springing up out of the ground, and over the years has been able to draw Canadians from all sorts of places at times where their own home province was relatively economically depressed. Alberta also has a conservative political culture and some unique ideas around how to organize things that were particularly different from, as you said, the "let's work together" approach of Sask under visionary leader Tommy Douglas and those that followed that social democratic road map. So I think you had a combination of Sask folks going to Alberta to work in the oil sands and picking up the politics and coming back with it, and the centralized conservative media touting Albertan success across the border as a road map for Saskachewan success. Of course the reality is that Alberta's success likely has a lot a lot less to do with their political policy choices, and a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that they get absolutely ginormous oil royalties that funds their every budget wish. Saskachewan trying to replicate what Alberta has via the policy side, without the resource royalty side, well they're not going to see the same outcomes.
- cwillu 4y ago
  Don't forget their fiber-to-the-home that started in 2012.
- VancouverMan 4y ago
  > Canada just needs a federal crown corporation to offer cell service. Canada Post Corporation exists, yet sending and receiving letters/parcels is expensive, slow, and often inconvenient throughout Canada. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation exists, yet the Canadian news and media landscape is severely lacking in quality (and in my experience, CBC typically has the lowest-quality content). VIA Rail Canada Inc. exists, yet passenger rail travel is expensive, slow, inconvenient, and quite limited throughout Canada. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation exists, yet housing is incredibly expensive throughout Canada. Yet another federal Crown corporation isn't the answer.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    > Canada Post Corporation exists, yet sending and receiving letters/parcels is expensive, slow, and often inconvenient throughout Canada. Very inexpensive and accessible, and private alternatives exist. Canada Post actually does a great job all things considered. Do you really think you can get a letter to Nunavut for $1.07 faster by private courier? Canada Post topped Canada's Most Trusted Brands list in 2020. [2] > The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation exists, yet the Canadian news and media landscape is severely lacking in quality (and in my experience, CBC typically has the lowest-quality content). Completely disagree on that one, and entirely opinion. > VIA Rail Canada Inc. exists, yet passenger rail travel is expensive, slow, inconvenient, and quite limited throughout Canada. It's actually very inexpensive - you can get from Ottawa to Toronto for like $100 CAD round trip - but yes slower than it could be, because the government chose not to invest in it. However, it has recently, and HFR along the corridor is going to be a material improvement. As is they are much cheaper than driving, faster than driving, waaaay cheaper than flying and sometimes faster. That said they made the list of Canada's Most Trusted Brands in the Travel category in 2022 so obviously not everyone agrees. [1] > Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation exists, yet housing is incredibly expensive throughout Canada. The job of CMHC is not to make housing affordable. That's the job of municipalities and zoning rules. The job of CMHC is to finance homes which they do a fantastic job of. This doesn't make any more sense than blaming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the high rent prices in San Francisco. Really doesn't make sense to judge them on something that isn't their job. > Yet another federal Crown corporation isn't the answer. So why does Saskatchewan have cell service that costs half what everyone else is paying? Sounds like it might be. What I would say is just like SaskTel in Saskatchewan, if you don't want to use it, don't sign up. But for me, I'd be onboard in a heartbeat and you'd love them too as they pushed down the cost of cellular service even if you chose not to. Rogers, Bell and Telus plans are similarly way cheaper in Saskatchewan because they have to actually compete for once. [1] https://www.uvic.ca/gustavson/brandtrust/assets/docs/final--gbti-2022-main-report.pdf https://www.uvic.ca/gustavson/brandtrust/assets/docs/final--... [2] https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/our-company/about-us/financial-reports/2020-annual-report/an-unprecedented-year.page https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/our-company/ab...
joseph_grobbles 4y ago
>This doesn't really solve a problem anyone had that fixed location Starlink and Rogers' LTE network didn't solve already This is for locations with no connectivity, where SpaceX satellites become very low-bandwidth Rogers towers for critical situations. Your examples are not relevant. The rest of your post is just knee-jerk opposition luddism that doesn't apply at all.
devindotcom 4y ago
The capability here is for 911 connectivity in areas where signal doesn't reach, and emergency notifications for things like extreme weather events or during power outages.

arcticbull 4y ago

> ... as the telcos here are oligarchs. There's one part of Canada that pays about half of what everyone else pays for cellular service - thats Saskatchewan. Because Saskatchewan has a government-run cell carrier, SaskTel. Canada just needs a federal crown corporation to offer cell service.

martinald 4y ago
Is this considered a good deal? 100GB data on SaskTel for $140/month? In the UK you can get that for ~£10/month, $17CAD. And before everyone starts, no, geography doesn't really make a huge difference in cost of providing the service. In remote rural areas you can get away with putting one tower up with LTE800 or another low frequency carrier, which will probably cover 20km in each direction from the cell site. Dense places are much more expensive to serve, requiring cell sites every <1km with a multitude of high and low frequency carriers.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  I'm not sure I see a 100GB plan on their website, a link might be useful. However SaskTel charges $35/month for a 5GB data-only plan while Rogers charges $60. They also have a $90CAD 60GB plan which Rogers would charge checks notes $180 for. So is it an objectively good deal, no. It is however half the national average.
  - martinald 4y ago
    https://www.sasktel.com/store/browse/Personal/Wireless/Rate-plans/_/N-2777 https://www.sasktel.com/store/browse/Personal/Wireless/Rate-... - click 100GB. I don't consider these plans unlimited; after the data allowance of 100GB speeds are shaped to <512kbit/sec which is close to unusable these days (some carriers in the UK offer similar but they consider it 'emergency' data to keep connected for basics, they wouldn't sell it as unlimited).
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      > I don't consider these plans unlimited; I think that's fair criticism. It's how this kind of plan is marketed all over North America. At one point Rogers marketed a 10MB plan as Unlimited like 10 years ago haha.
- b112 4y ago
  20km in each direction from the cell site. But this is a tiny, tiny distance in Canada... which has more rural roads than probably all of Europe.
  - martinald 4y ago
    Firstly, the majority of Canada's geography is not covered by cell service given the population lives in such a small percentage of it. Secondly, you can see how few towers SaskTel has here - https://www.sasktel.com/wps/wcm/connect/content/home/wireless/coverage-and-travel/coverage-travel https://www.sasktel.com/wps/wcm/connect/content/home/wireles... - click Saskatchewan LTE then show the various towers. Look how many towers are required for more "urban" areas in SK than the rural areas. These are pretty low density by european cities standards as well, where you can have small cells every 100m on busy streets.
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      > Firstly, the majority of Canada's geography is not covered by cell service given the population lives in such a small percentage of it. In Saskatchewan and Alberta, it surprisingly is. I'd say about 66% of the land area of Saskatchewan and Alberta has coverage on a mix of Bell, Telus and SaskTel. That's a ton of square footage. Your statement is true of Canada in general, but not the prairies. https://www.cellularmaps.com/regions/canada-coverage.shtml https://www.cellularmaps.com/regions/canada-coverage.shtml
    - b112 4y ago
      Firstly, the majority of Canada's geography is not covered by cell service given the population lives in such a small percentage of it. This shows a lack of understanding, for there are endless towers where no one lives. Recall those roads I mentioned? Towers are there too. Rural roads can go through 100s of km of brush, farmland, tundra, and have towers.
      - martinald 4y ago
        The majority of Canada's landmass does not have cell service[1]. That is a fact. That doesn't mean the same as there is no coverage if people don't live there. 1. https://www.comparecellular.ca/coverage-maps/ https://www.comparecellular.ca/coverage-maps/ - "Less than 30 percent of Canada’s geographic area is covered by Bell, Rogers, or TELUS."
ryanmentor 4y ago
This is a wild take that actually makes too much sense. I agree, let's do it!
rikthevik 4y ago
I'm a Saskatchewan resident. It's easy to grumble about the phone company, but Sasktel does a great job. We're a huge low-density province, but with the crown corp mandates, small towns in Saskatchewan have excellent cell and fibre service. There's no way a private company invests like that. Saskatchewan gets better and faster service for less money. We also have a provincial auto insurer, SGI. The prices for car insurance in Alberta or Ontario are ludicrous in comparison. The power and natural gas crowns are decent, as far as I can tell. https://twitter.com/wingkarli/status/1582019472315289601 https://twitter.com/wingkarli/status/1582019472315289601 > Canada is just five big banks, two grocery chains, and three telecom giants in a puffer down jacket. I'm not sure if federal crowns would be any better, but some competition would be a start.
- Tiktaalik 4y ago
  It's really sad how other provinces sold off their crown corps to their detriment and even Sask, long a leader in this area, has turned away from these sort of policies in recent years.
  - rikthevik 4y ago
    Saskatchewan politics don't make a lot of sense to me. I'm not sure how the "let's work together" mentality that gave us the Co-op, the Wheat Pool, and Medicare turned into a "fuck you, I got mine" mentality.
    - Tiktaalik 4y ago
      I think it is sadly a result of influence of their lucky and wealthy neighbour Alberta and trying to replicate that success using misguided cargo cult methods. Alberta of course massively wealthy due to the fortunes springing up out of the ground, and over the years has been able to draw Canadians from all sorts of places at times where their own home province was relatively economically depressed. Alberta also has a conservative political culture and some unique ideas around how to organize things that were particularly different from, as you said, the "let's work together" approach of Sask under visionary leader Tommy Douglas and those that followed that social democratic road map. So I think you had a combination of Sask folks going to Alberta to work in the oil sands and picking up the politics and coming back with it, and the centralized conservative media touting Albertan success across the border as a road map for Saskachewan success. Of course the reality is that Alberta's success likely has a lot a lot less to do with their political policy choices, and a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that they get absolutely ginormous oil royalties that funds their every budget wish. Saskachewan trying to replicate what Alberta has via the policy side, without the resource royalty side, well they're not going to see the same outcomes.
cwillu 4y ago
Don't forget their fiber-to-the-home that started in 2012.
VancouverMan 4y ago
> Canada just needs a federal crown corporation to offer cell service. Canada Post Corporation exists, yet sending and receiving letters/parcels is expensive, slow, and often inconvenient throughout Canada. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation exists, yet the Canadian news and media landscape is severely lacking in quality (and in my experience, CBC typically has the lowest-quality content). VIA Rail Canada Inc. exists, yet passenger rail travel is expensive, slow, inconvenient, and quite limited throughout Canada. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation exists, yet housing is incredibly expensive throughout Canada. Yet another federal Crown corporation isn't the answer.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  > Canada Post Corporation exists, yet sending and receiving letters/parcels is expensive, slow, and often inconvenient throughout Canada. Very inexpensive and accessible, and private alternatives exist. Canada Post actually does a great job all things considered. Do you really think you can get a letter to Nunavut for $1.07 faster by private courier? Canada Post topped Canada's Most Trusted Brands list in 2020. [2] > The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation exists, yet the Canadian news and media landscape is severely lacking in quality (and in my experience, CBC typically has the lowest-quality content). Completely disagree on that one, and entirely opinion. > VIA Rail Canada Inc. exists, yet passenger rail travel is expensive, slow, inconvenient, and quite limited throughout Canada. It's actually very inexpensive - you can get from Ottawa to Toronto for like $100 CAD round trip - but yes slower than it could be, because the government chose not to invest in it. However, it has recently, and HFR along the corridor is going to be a material improvement. As is they are much cheaper than driving, faster than driving, waaaay cheaper than flying and sometimes faster. That said they made the list of Canada's Most Trusted Brands in the Travel category in 2022 so obviously not everyone agrees. [1] > Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation exists, yet housing is incredibly expensive throughout Canada. The job of CMHC is not to make housing affordable. That's the job of municipalities and zoning rules. The job of CMHC is to finance homes which they do a fantastic job of. This doesn't make any more sense than blaming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the high rent prices in San Francisco. Really doesn't make sense to judge them on something that isn't their job. > Yet another federal Crown corporation isn't the answer. So why does Saskatchewan have cell service that costs half what everyone else is paying? Sounds like it might be. What I would say is just like SaskTel in Saskatchewan, if you don't want to use it, don't sign up. But for me, I'd be onboard in a heartbeat and you'd love them too as they pushed down the cost of cellular service even if you chose not to. Rogers, Bell and Telus plans are similarly way cheaper in Saskatchewan because they have to actually compete for once. [1] https://www.uvic.ca/gustavson/brandtrust/assets/docs/final--gbti-2022-main-report.pdf https://www.uvic.ca/gustavson/brandtrust/assets/docs/final--... [2] https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/our-company/about-us/financial-reports/2020-annual-report/an-unprecedented-year.page https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/our-company/ab...

joseph_grobbles 4y ago

>This doesn't really solve a problem anyone had that fixed location Starlink and Rogers' LTE network didn't solve already This is for locations with no connectivity, where SpaceX satellites become very low-bandwidth Rogers towers for critical situations. Your examples are not relevant. The rest of your post is just knee-jerk opposition luddism that doesn't apply at all.

devindotcom 4y ago

The capability here is for 911 connectivity in areas where signal doesn't reach, and emergency notifications for things like extreme weather events or during power outages.