Small Canadian Town Gets 1,000 Mbps Broadband

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Google Fiber not coming to a town near you? Screw it, do what this small Candian town did, build a fiber network and start their own ISP! :D Thanks to Alex Krstic for the linkage.

On Thursday, the board of O-Net gave approval for residents to get access to a full gigabit (or 1,000 megabits) per second of bandwidth for the same price that they currently pay for a guaranteed download speed of 100 megabits per second — $57 to $90 a month, depending on whether they have bundled their internet with TV and phone service.
 
A small town I lived in over 10 years ago had DSL before the larger adjacent one had DSL, cable, or any high speed options at all, all because they had their own phone company.
 
I bet this pisses Rogers/Bell/Telus/Shaw off something fierce. They don't like people interfering with their oligopoly.
 
The amount of bandwidth on tap is unique but there are a few smaller telcos running fiber to replace the aging copper infrastructure and offering IPTV, phone and internet services. They are ahead of the big guys who dominate the larger markets in many ways.

It's cool to see a small town see the importance of a solid internet infrastructure and not just wait for the big guys to come save the day.
 
The amount of bandwidth on tap is unique but there are a few smaller telcos running fiber to replace the aging copper infrastructure and offering IPTV, phone and internet services. They are ahead of the big guys who dominate the larger markets in many ways.

It's cool to see a small town see the importance of a solid internet infrastructure and not just wait for the big guys to come save the day.

There's lots of muni's thinking of doing something like this in Canada. In B.C., Coquitlam is already running lease lines off of their dark fiber network which was laid over the years to join all the traffic signals together. Unfortunately they've only offered that fiber to the incumbent cable / telco's (which aren't using it), and one small start-up who only services the high-rise towers at the city's core (basically only 6-7 buildings).

Short story, taxpayers have paid for that fiber network and they've seen almost zero benefit from it so far, so there are always two sides to things. Had they had the guts and political motivation to go beyond just leasing to third parties that don't care about the residents, there could already have been FTTH service available to 70%+ of the homes. You could easily roll the installation costs into the homeowner rates amortized over 5-10 years, to the point where the monthly increase would be marginal at best.

Now that is something to attract business and residents, more then measly tax breaks which are of limited benefit and always come with an expiry date.
 
My local phone company is county owned their goal is fiber to every home in the county, I believe they are the only county owned telecom company in the USA, only going to be 100 mbs but the service is shared with phone and TV its not all data service, about 60 a month for 100 mbs. This county is in the middle of the Nevada desert and we have awesome internet speeds , maybe local government is the best way to get hi speed to rural areas, there are less than 30,00 people in my county but we are spread out over a pretty good sized area with the exception of the one city of 7,000 people.
 
The telecom companies in Canada already have us over a barrel. Rogers charges $75+ for a 45mbps connection with a 150GB cap. There is little to no competition in this market and the CRTC just lets them get away with it.
 
There is competition! TSI, Electrobox, Acanac, amongst others. Very reasonable pricing for their service.
25/10 TSI Cable, 300GB cap, unlimited download 2am-2pm, 44$ after tax/mnth, no contract. Respect!
 
I remember last year in the UK a small town/village had been told that for the main telco (BT) to install 2Mbps ADSL to their homes would cost like £3.5 million to do. Basically "we can't be bothered so go away!"

So the locals got in touch with a smaller telco firm and they said they could get them all 50Mbps ADSL installed for like £100K.

So they did. Much to BT's annoyance and embarrassment.

Call your local telco's bluff. It can be done.
 
There are a lot of independent USA ISPs where I live. One of the local guys just ran fibre through the city where I grew up because the local "big" cable company refused to upgrade their 1970's wiring without the city covering the cost.
 
Awesome! Now those people in that town can email each other at gigbit speeds. Too bad they have copper ADSL connecting the ISP to the rest of the world.
 
Most of which heavily donate to keep incumbents in their pocket, on both sides of the fence, and in pretty much every country there is with crony systems.
 
You can't truly use this amount of bandwidth, you will be booted off quicker than you can imagine. Transit in rule areas is extremely expensive and they will need to purchase lots of transit at a hub.
 
Republicans in this country throw a shit fit when cities or counties try something like this
Hell, in a lot of red states it is even outlawed
Meanwhile is civilized & not regressive (red states) parts of the US we have this happening
http://gizmodo.com/5995487/gigabit-internet-in-vermont-is-cheaper-than-google-fiber

Talk about crony capitalism, they were given a $116 million dollar federal grant to do this. This is why it is illegal in many states to do this sort of thing, it is a MASSIVE misallocation of resources.
 
nice to see some progress up here, my sister lives outside a town of 40 people and she has fiber to the home (not copper) from a small ISP she only has like a 10/1 package but seeing options that dont rely on Cable/Coppy phones lines means Rogers/Bell need to get with the times, or the CRTC will save them some how crippling the competition

Rogers and Bell will be up shit creek if and when fibre into the home or internet over power comes along and companies aren't forced into leasing their lines to resell
 
The telecom companies in Canada already have us over a barrel. Rogers charges $75+ for a 45mbps connection with a 150GB cap. There is little to no competition in this market and the CRTC just lets them get away with it.

Agreed.

I'm on this 45/4 connection with rogers but I only pay $40 for it.

on a 2 year discount :)
 
Townships issuing bonds to do this (not using federal grants) have been sued by telcos as well, going back all the way to 2002. What they do is tie up township money in legal proceedings disrupting plans and roll out their own shitty solution in the time between. It is SHADY as shit and has happened in MN and a number of other states.
 
like someone said the large telcos not the redness or blueness are the blocks to local hispeed internet. Only a kollaid drinker would inject red or blue into this. I happen to live in a very conservative area and my county is doing very well installing fiber to every home.
 
In our neck of the woods at least, it was all the red leaning state officials which put together a bill to BAN municipal ISP's in any area where the local monopoly can provide access to at least 50 or 51% of the local population. And the Blue gov didn't Veto it.

Woo, woo... assholes. The lot of them.
 
Talk about crony capitalism, they were given a $116 million dollar federal grant to do this. This is why it is illegal in many states to do this sort of thing, it is a MASSIVE misallocation of resources.

I'm kind of on the fence. If the laying of fiber was treated as a general, nationwide infrastructure upgrade that ANY private entity could tap into, I'd be applauding the government for money well spent. Instead, this is something that only benefited a specific private company for use by a specific town, yet taxpayer money collected nationwide was used to pay for it. That's bullshit.
 
They're both responsible for the current laws and systems that telco/cableco's live under.
 
The telecom companies in Canada already have us over a barrel. Rogers charges $75+ for a 45mbps connection with a 150GB cap. There is little to no competition in this market and the CRTC just lets them get away with it.

I visited my parents in Ontario a few weeks ago. An 80 GB cap would be an "upgrade" to them. They have to use a shitty satellite service with really shitty bandwidth. It's probably one of the biggest reasons I can never see moving back to my old neighborhood.
 

Yes. :(


In the USA, most municipalities can't do this due to contracts with other ISP's in the region. Real shitty, too. There are companies that rely on a solid, fast internet connection. If they want to put an office somewhere or relocate, they look for that connection. If it's not there, that location is not considered. Bringing in the fast, Gb connection would be great for local businesses and new businesses. I think it could really help out local economies. I really have no numbers to back that up, though.
 
I'm kind of on the fence. If the laying of fiber was treated as a general, nationwide infrastructure upgrade that ANY private entity could tap into, I'd be applauding the government for money well spent. Instead, this is something that only benefited a specific private company for use by a specific town, yet taxpayer money collected nationwide was used to pay for it. That's bullshit.
Its complete crap and unfortunately when you have that much money involved, politics is kicked in to high gear.

IMO we should do something similar to the deregulation of energy in Texas. I'm paying a reasonable 8.8 cents per KWH currently, and basically what the plan is is that a company can lay down the copper to an area and is reimbursed for that investment, but then ANY powerplant on the grid can sell you energy directly.

This would encourage the big Cox, Comcasts, etc of America to make the reasonably risk free investment in laying fiber, and only ONE fiber line to a house, and then you can have any ISP actually provide you service and the direct competition should drive down prices.
 
I visited my parents in Ontario a few weeks ago. An 80 GB cap would be an "upgrade" to them. They have to use a shitty satellite service with really shitty bandwidth. It's probably one of the biggest reasons I can never see moving back to my old neighborhood.

That has to be northern ontario and not southern.

I live in southern ontario we get decent speeds if you are north its a crap shoot.
 
I live in small twin cities in no where Nebraska, we have had gigabit fiber for over a year now. Unfortunately, it's mostly for business and costs $250/month for the gigabit, but you can get it residentially if you want it. But I recently moved to a different part of town where the fiber isn't available yet and had to go back to cable. le cry.
 
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