Canadian Town's Sole Internet Provider Is Shutting Down

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Imagine what it would be like to live in a town with no internet or cell service? That's exactly what is happening right now in a small town in Canada. Instead of getting the high-speed internet access the town was fighting for, the only ISP in the area went out of business instead.

No Facebook, no Netflix, no Google and no email: that will be the reality for the residents of Stewart, B.C., starting on Tuesday for at least one month. "For me, personally, it's like my life stopped right now," said Stewart Mayor Galina Durant. "My community, including my house and my office, will be without an internet connection."
 
There's only one supplier here as well. We all know all three employees, in fact two of them used to work for me during the summer. At least they'll be getting a replacement, and we all have horrible satellite available.

We don't invest in data infrastructure in Canada. It's a fad, the internet is just a toy. Like Pogs, and Teddy Ruxpin.
 
We don't invest in data infrastructure in Canada. It's a fad, the internet is just a toy. Like Pogs, and Teddy Ruxpin.

That only applies to small-towns. In large cities the infrastructure is quite robust. Where I live I have the choice of 2 fiber to the home companies and 20+ cable high-speed providers (no DSL because I don't have copper phone lines, but there are several options if you do). It's similar to the situation in the USA. Large cities have lots of options, but small towns are screwed.
 
That only applies to small-towns. In large cities the infrastructure is quite robust. Where I live I have the choice of 2 fiber to the home companies and 20+ cable high-speed providers (no DSL because I don't have copper phone lines, but there are several options if you do). It's similar to the situation in the USA. Large cities have lots of options, but small towns are screwed.

Uh....In the USA most cities large or small have 1 ISP and that is it. "Lots of options" my foot.
 
Hmmm, really I could easily live without it.

I remember the "good old days" when there was no such thing.

If I could make it as a farmer I would. :)
 
Uh....In the USA most cities large or small have 1 ISP and that is it. "Lots of options" my foot.

That's because of those ISPs "investing" in election funds for the local electorate. Vote out the people who are ensuring that ISPs monopoly, and things will change.
 
you know you have a monopoly when your company's name can reflect its

OneWayOut,

Only provider of a data connection out of town. literally they are the one way out to the internet
 
I]No Facebook, no Netflix, no Google and no email: that will be the reality for the residents of Stewart, B.C., starting on Tuesday for at least one month. "For me, personally, it's like my life stopped right now," said Stewart Mayor Galina Durant. "My community, including my house and my office, will be without an internet connection."[/I][/QUOTE]

I think that I would be able to make a month. I think.
 
That's because of those ISPs "investing" in election funds for the local electorate. Vote out the people who are ensuring that ISPs monopoly, and things will change.

Not really. In the USA most of the consumer internet infrastructure was built by ISP companies. And further it was and still is owned by them.

This of course seems monumentally idiotic. Which it is.


ISPs won't suddenly change, because all the fiber and boxes are owned by the monopoly. For anyone else to break into a given city market they better have their own backhoes, because they'll have to lay down their own infrastructure.
 
That only applies to small-towns. In large cities the infrastructure is quite robust. Where I live I have the choice of 2 fiber to the home companies and 20+ cable high-speed providers (no DSL because I don't have copper phone lines, but there are several options if you do). It's similar to the situation in the USA. Large cities have lots of options, but small towns are screwed.

lol, what? Even right smack in the middle of "silicon valley" that is nowhere near correct.
 
Sounds like rural New Zealand. I live in an area pretty much the same. I have no cell coverage, dialup speed broadband (with a near perfect line to the exchange) - thanks to overloaded conklin backlinks.

Govt goes on about upgrading everything for years, nothing happens, we are misrepresented in the mapping as '5mbit' which is total bullshit. Perhaps at 4-5am if you are very lucky.

We pay same rate as a normal connection too!
 
I live in a small town in the US. We only have one option, DSL. On top of that we have limited speeds available. Hell, we just got 10mbps. I should not complain too much, I remember when all we had was dial up. I almost went with satellite for my business but I could not justify it, even when all we had was dial up. Thankfully the phone company started to offer DSL when internet became a requirement for my business.
 
I pay $77 a month for a 5/1 mbps internet connection. No other services included or available.
 
The town has 500 people in it. You could likely stand up a 50ft UHF antenna with the equipment you need to get this to work.

I live in a rural farm area with about 2000 people and I'm stuck paying 60/mo for a 1mb connection. Too far for DSL too far for Cable and every satellite provider out there has unrealistic data caps. I was paying 125/mo for 25gb.
 
Oddly enough my wife and I are considering a move to a small - and I do mean small - town in the Midwest because she has family in that area. My first concern of course was Internet access which I simply have to have - I'll give up TV, even cell phone service if I have to but not Internet access for my laptop, that's a deal breaker first and foremost.

So I did some research into what's in the area and it appears that of the 13 or so providers, they all get consistent F ratings by customers across a multitude of review sources: BroadbandReports, DSLReports, Angie's List (yeah, I know), and most every other one I've checked out. The best service speed is reported as oh, around 8-10Mbps and I'm like "My god, that's stone age to me..." and I've been "online" since the late 1970s with dialup at 50 then 300 baud so I've been there, done that, and I'm not gonna do it again.

I feel for these folks about to lose their Internet access, definitely, and I hope a solution presents itself soon.
 
That only applies to small-towns. In large cities the infrastructure is quite robust. Where I live I have the choice of 2 fiber to the home companies and 20+ cable high-speed providers (no DSL because I don't have copper phone lines, but there are several options if you do). It's similar to the situation in the USA. Large cities have lots of options, but small towns are screwed.

Yep, we have robust infrastructure, and we over-pay for it and get slower speeds than Kazahkstan thanks to the fact that the big three telecom companies make full use of their oligopoly to screw the consumer.
 
only 1 provider all across Canada with different names, CRTC and its all corrupt lol
 
Uh....In the USA most cities large or small have 1 ISP and that is it. "Lots of options" my foot.

That isn't usually true for even small towns as the telephone infrastructure that allows DSL is nationwide ... all but the smallest towns generally have at least one one cable provider (in addition to the DSL options) ... and the big cities generally have additional cable or fiber options ... and that doesn't include the pricey wireless options or satellite options ... we may not always like the choices in the USA but that doesn't mean we don't have choices
 
That isn't usually true for even small towns as the telephone infrastructure that allows DSL is nationwide ... all but the smallest towns generally have at least one one cable provider (in addition to the DSL options) ... and the big cities generally have additional cable or fiber options ... and that doesn't include the pricey wireless options or satellite options ... we may not always like the choices in the USA but that doesn't mean we don't have choices

Except for where the telephone lines are crap and houses are too far away from the boxes for DSL to work, and the cable provider has decided your podunk town ain't worth the trouble.

Most of rural America....which is, geographically speaking, most of America.... falls into those categories. Tons of folks on H who live just on the wrong side of the city line and that 800ft difference means they either get dial up....or if they are "lucky" they could call the cable company and maybe pay a mere $50-100,000 to get a backhoe out to dig a line of service.
 
That only applies to small-towns. In large cities the infrastructure is quite robust. Where I live I have the choice of 2 fiber to the home companies and 20+ cable high-speed providers (no DSL because I don't have copper phone lines, but there are several options if you do). It's similar to the situation in the USA. Large cities have lots of options, but small towns are screwed.

No you don't.
 
That town will likely fail without it. The internet is fundamental to most services in the modern world (banking, retail, government services etc).
 
I mean, this is good news for US Robotics, right?

Right? Earthlink is still around, $10 a month* (first 3 months).

Actually I cannot fathom how even a smoking hot* (for modem) 56k connection is really usable for anything other than email nowadays. By contrast... how fast is EDGE? 1.5mbs?
 
no Internet?
bah, go read a book.

Oh no!
Apocalypse!
The end of the world is coming cause I lost my internet!

If you want internet so bad you can always break out the 56k modem :p
 
If they do not get any connectivity would be interesting to see what becomes of the town in 18 months time. I'm betting a lot of boarded up shops and houses.

Either that or the town advertises itself as an exclusive 'internet getaway' for people that want to spend a vacation or weekend away from distraction.

Stranger things...
 
Biggest problem is, 56K won't even get you close to the performance you got with it back in the nineties. Every web page has been 'graphicized'; stuff that was lots of text is now all pictures and icons and buttons, and they take forever to load. I vaguely remember hearing about the big companies like Intel and Microsoft seeding companies to increase the use of graphics to 'push' the world into this mess (don't know how true it was, only that whenever web pages got fancier, they took longer and longer to load). Today with all the stuff being sent with the basic web page, at 56k it will take a day to load a page, and it will freeze up constantly. So dial up is no longer really an option, and the entry level dsl isn't much better. .
 
Personally Id rather live without running water in my house vs no internet.

Having said that, life would go on. (if a bit painful)

My thought/concern would be - what about businesses? The company I work for plain and simply would go out of business if it had no internet access for a month.
 
Uh....In the USA most cities large or small have 1 ISP and that is it. "Lots of options" my foot.

I live in a small town, Sierra Vista, AZ. We have at least four options, some here have five.

There is the Cable provider, COX, the DSL Provider Century Link, Satellite from Hughes and Dish, Wireless from a local ISP, Clark Information Systems, and then if you live on the north end there is Powerline service from the Electric company.

SV has a population of less then 45,000.

Those nice maps showing how the country is divided up between the major ISP, they don't tell the whole story, not by half.
 
Opps, and I forgot to mention 3K or 4K data networks from the cell providers and if I want to, I can turn my car into a hotspot with SIRIUS XM :D
 
I live in a small town, Sierra Vista, AZ. We have at least four options, some here have five.

There is the Cable provider, COX, the DSL Provider Century Link, Satellite from Hughes and Dish, Wireless from a local ISP, Clark Information Systems, and then if you live on the north end there is Powerline service from the Electric company.

SV has a population of less then 45,000.

Those nice maps showing how the country is divided up between the major ISP, they don't tell the whole story, not by half.

45K? That's not a small town....
 
Biggest problem is, 56K won't even get you close to the performance you got with it back in the nineties. Every web page has been 'graphicized'; stuff that was lots of text is now all pictures and icons and buttons, and they take forever to load. I vaguely remember hearing about the big companies like Intel and Microsoft seeding companies to increase the use of graphics to 'push' the world into this mess (don't know how true it was, only that whenever web pages got fancier, they took longer and longer to load). Today with all the stuff being sent with the basic web page, at 56k it will take a day to load a page, and it will freeze up constantly. So dial up is no longer really an option, and the entry level dsl isn't much better. .

56k + Lynx!

But more realistically, Opera Turbo compressed browsing might be the way to go.
 
45K? That's not a small town....

Sure there are smaller, but 45 thousand is still small. Tucson is over an hour away and that's a large town, over 520 thousand. Tucson is large, but not huge. I've been in huge, Seoul Korea, over 20 million people with 10 million commuters a day. It tends to provide a clear view of the upper end of the scale and that gives you a reference point for the rest.
 
56k + Lynx!

But more realistically, Opera Turbo compressed browsing might be the way to go.

I put up three links to "the way to go" just a few posts above. The answer is right there along with people who would probably be glad to provide pointers.
 
I put up three links to "the way to go" just a few posts above. The answer is right there along with people who would probably be glad to provide pointers.
Did you intend to quote me? My (tongue-in-cheek in the case of Lynx) suggestions were in direct response to nightfly's observations that the web has become much more data intensive since 56k was commonplace.

The whole town is only a mile long, they could probably throw up a municipal Wifi network (or TVWS if line-of-sight is a problem) pretty quickly. Not sure what the backhaul situation is like, which is probably the biggest problem...this town isn't even in the middle of nowhere, it's at the end of nowhere.

Good article on another rural community ISP project:
http://arstechnica.com/information-...neighbors-created-their-own-internet-service/
 
Yes I intended to quote you. I just didn't intend for you to take great exception to it :D
 
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