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Bell and Telus had mastered the art of extracting government incentives to pay for their fibre build outs as well. They would demand subsidies in the 100s of mi
by jmacd 3y ago
Bell and Telus had mastered the art of extracting government incentives to pay for their fibre build outs as well. They would demand subsidies in the 100s of millions of $ in some cases.
In one example they had Fibre running to a city in Northern Ontario. Of course it was along a highway and already strung there for years. A subsidy was made availabel for providing highspeed internet to rural customers and rather than build out new infrastructure, the ISP just said they would connect anyone along the path of the fibre that was already there. That fibre had ALREADY been subsidized by a previous government.
Starlink has hopefully brought an end to that. Now instead of spending 10s and 100s of thousands of $ to subsidize the connection of a house, they simply need to provide a $800 subsidy for a Starlink dish.
- alphabettsy 3y agoStarlink isn’t without its downsides. It seems like terrestrial WISP would be more cost effective in some of these situations.
- bcrl 3y agoI run a fibre ISP in Ontario. Where I live and operate we have rocks, hills and trees. WISPs are not a realistic option to service many of the customers we serve.
- bcrl 3y agoStarlink has not brought an end to the subsidies. The Ontario government is in the process of rolling out subsidies of >$5000 per home under the AHSIP (Accelerated High Speed Internet Program). It should have increased competition (it was set up as a reverse auction), but the terms were such that all the smaller ISPs were unable to participate. The smallest award was $24.7 million to serve 3265 homes which works out to $7565 per home. The bonding requirement put that far out of reach of local ISPs as nobody can get bonded for $24 million when you're only doing $5-10 million a year in revenue. This program is supposed to be fully rolled out by the end of 2025.
- morkalork 3y agoThis is an astounding amount of money per household just to be gouged by the provider afterwards as a customer. If we're already paying that much through taxes, we may as well own it as a utility.