Bill St. Arnaud on how Canada’s broadband access compares to the rest of the world:
We were number two in broadband rankings around the world about 10 years ago. But that gave us a false sense of security. Then we didn’t continue to invest in that infrastructure and upgrading it, and now we’ve fallen down. We’re now eighth or tenth ranking in the world, and dropping fast.
For our upcoming episode about “Access,” Nora interviewed CANARIE‘s Bill St. Arnaud about the current state of Canada’s broadband networks. A shorter version of their interview will air on Spark on April 16 & 19, but you can listen to the full interview below, or download the mp3.
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We were only #2 because we are right next to the country that invented the internet (and who obviously would have been #1 for a least a little while)
How do we compare to any other country that is more than 5000km across?
I love the idea of us having fiber to the door, but how much will that cost?
Grant is correct. People may be thinking were falling behind because were neglecting it, but Canada is the second largest country in the world. These incredibly small countries like Japan, Hong-Kong, South Korea, and Finland are very easy to blanket with wireless towers and fiber optic cable. FiOS is 6 dollars a metre, imagine covering all of Canada.
No, we will probably never be the best, but for our size, what we’ve done is exemplary. Its not fair to compare us to the smaller countries, because, in our position, they’d be doing worse, if not much.
What about fibre in all major Canadian cities? I don’t see why the cost of that would be higher in Canada than any other major world cities that already have fibre in metropolitan areas.
Put fibre where most of the people are, don’t worry about putting it up in cottage country people.
I strongly disagree with this attitude of “you can’t compare Canada to other nations because we are so big”. That simply sets up a scenario where we can never be at fault.
Canada made great breakthroughs in long range broadband communication (look into microwave technology) BECAUSE of our size. If you wanted to make a fair comparison, compare developed countries to developing countries (and by developing I mean those that are installing their networks right now).
The developed countries have built up huge infrastructures, and it is very expensive to upgrade these, because disruptions to the existing systems (including the roads, etc, that are build on top of our network lines) must be minimized. Developing countries, on the other hand, have the relative luxury of installing the current technology (fiber optic) as their first networks, and on top of this, they get to put them in when everything else is getting buried, so the cost of the installation is shared amongst the various services facilities.
The more advanced we get, the more expensive it will tend to become further advanced. Of course, the cost of not advancing ourselves can be even greater if our competitors pass us, but that’s it in a nutshell.
PS, I am an electrical engineer and a computer scientist, and I am very much in favour of installing more advanced network lines, I am ready to pay the price, but I am realistic that it will not be cheap.
I take exception to the first comment: -”We were only #2 because we are right next to the country that invented the internet”. Switzerland invented the Internet – no matter what many Americans think. Research CERN.
1st off:
Once you pay for it the cost may be a little higher to maintain but no way you can say its sooooo much as to not bother doing it.
2nd off:
This is all about getting more granmas that use 1GB and sell those for 40$ a pop.
3rd off:
As we get more in tune and knowing of whats possible ( HAHA give p2p more press please ) more people will do it and ask how its done.
Hollywood is even beginning to migrate to it and with SAC like ISP deals you can see the complete end to it, however ….
4th off: we must have choice to opt in to such stuff as i said on faircopyright for canada site. If you dont want in on it then give the isp right to limit after all the added cash ( last year only 150 mill from movie piracy so wtf do they need 1.2 bill [5$/month] )
5th off : SAC Counter proposol
you get 60 mill a year i say we give you 50cents thats double what you get now. give 1$ to movies.
That changes loss for movies from 130-150 mill to profit and remidies the actions.
http://www.havocscope.com/Counterfeit/canada.htm
NOTE forget software altogether
think sourceforge.net
and you can get everything legally thre free.
Come on people, lets move into 2008. The telcos and such make record profits. Invest some of it. Some say *oh im ready to pay for fibre to my door* But it shouldnt cost what you think. France for example, Phone, TV, AND 50MBPS net, 50 euro a month. Please spare me with it should cost a lot.
CERN in Switzerland developed the World Wide Web. The Internet was developed in the 1960′s by DARPA in the US. The technology to move packets of information around is different from hypertext protocols.
Interesting that this discussion seems to be heating up in the UK too, with the iPlayer discussion, and also plans for upgrades, for example, here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7350431.stm
Hi,
A Canadian company is working on providing 400 Mb/s over existing copper telephone lines so that fiber is not needed to the home. This is sufficient bandwidth for many HDTV channels. It is also far more “green” in that no neighbourhoods need to be ripped up to install fiber. The telephone wire is already there. See http://www.genesistechsys.com for more information.
Thanks.
The interview with Bill had the same problem as the rest of the interviews on this show, and most others in the media. In an attempt to simplify this issue to make it understandable, a key technology policy question is missed which turns out to be core of the current debate.
Lets take a typical DSL connection as an example. There are actually 4 components to this system:
a) A pair of copper connecting a DSL modem to equipment in a Central Office (CO) that is managed by the phone company. This is the type of connection that is asynchronous where there is more speed down to the customer than back up to the network. At this point it is not an “Internet” connection, but a regulated data connection.
b) A connection between the local CO and other COs within the underlying infrastructure of the phone company. These connections are most often high-speed fiber, and because of the way they were built are extremely inexpensive and largely underutilized. The labour of putting fiber below and above public and private property is the largest expense, so they lay down very large bundles of fiber at the same time — and most of this is not yet in use. Fiber is asynchronous, so there is the same speed in each direction. Because the (a) type connections are asynchronous, there is actually even more a glut of “uplink” bandwidth than there is “downlink” given individual DSL connections can’t use as much uplink as downlink. At this point it is still not an “Internet” connection, but a regulated data connection.
c) A connection from specific COs to the actual ISP (example: Teksavvy). ISPs are not allowed to put equipment in every CO, so they rely on the (b) type connections to get between customers and the ISP equipment.
d) Various connections that the ISP purchases to connect to other parts of the Internet. This is where congestion might happen, given some of these connections are expensive (includes submarine cabling between continents, etc).
Bell is claiming that there is congestion on the (b) type connections and thus they should be allowed to throttle them. It should be clear if you understand the underlying technology that this is factually incorrect.
i) This is the least expensive part of the network as it is using fiber which is already built and just needs to be “lit up”. It is also largely connections between and within urban centers, which is the cheapest part of the network to build.
ii) If there were legitimacy to congestion claims, it would only be legitimate on the downlink give the uplink will always be less able to be utilized than downlink. This again makes what Bell says smell bad given they claim it is the ‘uplink’ that is the problem, with P2P using more uplink.
The reality is that by managing P2P on the (b) type links it should be clear that this is not management for legitimate technical purposes, but management for business purposes.
What is the purpose? Anti-competitive. Often the cheapest way to solve congestion problems is to buy more capacity, which is what ISPs like Teksavvy were doing. Sympatico wanted to take the route of traffic shaping, which lead an increasing number of customers to switch from Sympatico to competing ISPs like Teksavvy. By manipulating packets on the (b) network rather than on Sympatico’s network, Bell is trying to destroy the competitive advantage that Teksavvy would otherwise have.
What they are doing is and should remain clearly illegal, and cannot be considered legitimate/legal network management.
But … the more people confuse the throttling issue with “Network Neutrality”, the more likely Bell will get away with this illegal/illegitimate activity.
The Bell rep kept claiming that ISPs should be able to manage their own networks, and that competitive forces should decide what happens (IE: customers being able to switch to companies that provide the services they want). I agree with this, but Bell is in fact one of the companies most in the way of allowing this to happen.
I don’t know how much other commenters know about CANARIE, but 10 years ago Canada had the fastest research network in the world. At the time, that meant downloading a DVD in a quarter of a second. And that network could be used as a kind of model for what was possible.
In that context, it was very easy to imagine treating networking like roads and other public infrastructure. We could invest heavily – amortized over 20 years -and enable competitive business over the network, and revolutionize healthcare, and save the environment, and become a technical and communications powerhouse. National fibre has the same rationale as municipal fibre.
Instead, like the US and UK, we let business do it. Very slowly. Very expensively. In the past 10 years (in the UK – I quickly calculate) I’ve spent about $6,000 Cdn on internet access. It’s currently 6Mbps. Can I telecommute? No. Can I get HD TV over it? No. Can I download a DVD in a quarter of a second? No, more like a quarter of a month. Are there exciting new high speed businesses and applications? No.
However, web and email and tiny videos are *not* agonizingly slow anymore. They are adequate. But accessing files off the office file server is not fast enough to be worth bothering with, and the idea that I could log into my account at work as if I were in the office is laughable. It needs at least 50Mbps. That means Tube fare is an every day cost as well. It costs 4 times more to transfer me than to transfer bits. And what was the cost of fibre again!?!
Today I have to worry about my ISP spying on me and selling it to advertisers, or turning it over to Viacom, so they can satisfy themselves that I’m not illicitly consuming their product. (Like I *want* their product!) And the model for the future makes the internet start to look like TV 2.0, ie. bad idea #42: let’s put analog companies like the telephone, music, TV, and movie industries in charge of the internet! I wonder what kind of deal *they* will cut with repressive government #23? (Yesterday I was looking at some method like Tor or Psyphon to protect me from my ISP. Apparently that kind of protection is impossible. How will Canadians protect themselves from C-61?)
In 21C, networking is far too important to leave to business and our most corruptible politicians. It’s ironic the potential for the internet to transform our world is so great, and yet our ability to provision it is so pathetic. You just want to give humanity a big hug for being such losers. “Sure, they’re incompetent, greedy little buggers, but they *do* try, god bless them.”
Incidentally, Canada has had a history of good communications because we’ve needed them. It’s a big, cold country. The other countries with a reputation for good communications are the northern EU countries. Snow is a good reason to have a phone. We can’t afford *not* to have good communications. That’s also why the railroad is important. And that’s why Marshall McLuhan thought about communication and technology, and not some guy in Bermuda.