Canadian Regulators Declare 50 Mbps To Be The New Broadband Standard
from the high-water-mark dept
A few years back, the FCC here in the States bumped the base definition of broadband from 4 Mbps downstream, 1 Mbps upstream, to 25 Mbps downstream, 4 Mbps upstream. This was done in large part to highlight the lack of competition (two-thirds lack access to speeds of 25 Mbps from more than one provider) at faster speeds, largely thanks to telcos that no longer really want to be in the residential broadband business and are refusing to upgrade their networks at any scale. Needless to say, neither ISPs -- nor the politicians paid to love them -- were happy with the new standard.Recently the Canadian government took things further, announcing new rules that make 50 Mbps downstream, 10 Mbps upstream the new industry standard. In addition to declaring that this 50 Mbps option should be considered "basic telecom service" moving forward, the CRTC announced that it's requiring that Canadian ISPs at least offer users the ability to purchase an uncapped, unlimited broadband connection.
According to the CRTC, 82% of Canadians already have access to speeds of 50 Mbps -- but like in the States, availability for these faster options are incredibly scarce in more remote areas where competitive incentive is minimal and deployment costs are higher. To that end, the CRTC said it's setting aside a $750 million subsidy fund to shore up backbone connectivity. The CRTC Is claiming that the effort should result in 50 Mbps service being made available to 90% of Canadian households by the end of 2021, and to the remaining 10% of households within 10 to 15 years after that.
Of course, telecom subsidies are nothing new, and the amount of money thrown at incumbent broadband providers in North America probably could have delivered gigabit fiber connections to every home on the planet several times over. These efforts are usually well-intentioned, but things quite frequently get lost in translation thanks to telecom providers with significant influence over the regulators and legislatures tasked with making sure this money gets spent effectively.
And while the 50 Mbps high-water mark is important in a sense, it's also partially theatrical. Telecom regulators have a long, proud history of announcing initiatives that sound transformative, but can often be achieved without much government help. When the "goal" is achieved down the road with minimal calorie expenditure, government often steps in to pat itself on the back for a job well done. Doing anything more would require actually standing up to some of the most politically influential companies on the continent.
And again in this case, Canadian Law Professor Michael Geist is quick to point out that the plan isn't as revolutionary as it's being portrayed:
"It would be a stretch to describe expanding access to these target speeds to an additional 8 per cent of the population over five years as transformative. In fact, given the investments from various providers, it raises the question of whether Canada might reach that target without the CRTC’s efforts. Indeed, the real challenge remains the last 10 per cent in rural and remote areas for which there are no easy answers.You'll note that much like its regulators to the south, the CRTC punts when it comes to actually acknowledging the lack of broadband market competition and the high prices and poor service that results. This lack of competition also introduces the thorniest telecom issues of the day: including net neutrality violations and the slow but steady expansion of usage caps and overage fees. It's easier to focus on shoring up remaining coverage gaps, especially when the government won't have to do all that much to ensure service (albeit incredibly expensive service) arrives via 5G and other new technologies.
Affordability goes hand-in-hand with access, yet the CRTC largely punted this issue, noting that “a comprehensive solution to affordability issues will require a multifaceted approach, including the participation of other stakeholders.” That places much of the responsibility on the government, but the CRTC had the opportunity to push providers harder on affordability. The Commission points to innovative solutions from some companies – Rogers and Telus are obvious examples – but leaves observers to wonder why it did not go further by setting goals or targets for industry laggards."
With a few exceptions, a good rule of thumb with government broadband announcements like this is: if the incumbent ISPs are ok with it, it either doesn't do all that much or provides them money for doing very little. And based on a review of the newswires, Canadian incumbent ISPs aren't complaining about this new, supposedly lofty plan in the slightest.
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false
i dont UNLESS i go with a company that bloody well near cost me my li9fe last time i was with them....
oddly teksavvy isnt allowed to give me that 50 megabit that bell canada can and will spy cheat and lie and cause everyone harm...
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Open up to wholesale to independants and bam competition arrives and capilism starts working again.
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America can do better
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Re:
Telus rejiggered their package lineup earlier this year when discussion on these topics had just got started. Bell has been dragging their heels a bit, and Rogers/Shaw have been providing these speeds and service for a while already.
But companies like Teksavvy were starting to get squeezed, as they couldn't get the faster service at a reasonable rate to resell to customers, without entering some shady data volume-based agreements. The CRTC ruling helps them sidestep all this and remain competitive.
But yeah; there's still a lot of old copper wiring out there in the hinterland where Cable doesn't exist and many homes are too far away from the NOC to get decent DSL speeds. This problem can only be fixed with infrastructure upgrades; either 5G or new cables and switches.
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The State's subsidy in service of the disabling new false need of megabyte information speed mirrors its long standing subsidy of the counterproductive high physical speed of motor transportation networks.
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At what CO$T?
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from the high-water-mark dept
Sound weird? Not really, considering when modems first came out to the public market they were Appletalk speed at 300kbps. The applications utilizing the connection modeling to the available speed.
At CES this week they were discussing 10k video within the HDMI 2.1 spec. Go to JPL or to the ESA, imagine the bandwidth these researchers could utilize.
High Water mark for me will always be a moving target as the verb or use of the connection will continue to grow with research advances.
I would posit that we need an international standards body that defines what high speed really means and they come out with reports every 5 years on what should be enacted to the public.
This way the public has something to go to our "utilities" with and pressure them for faster/broader or lower cost.
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And speaking of breaks, the work for a high upstream speed is going to cause a lot of convenient downtime.
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Australia
That is, until there was a change of government. The opposition had objected to the fibre optics and now that the opposition were in charge, suddenly we were told that we didn't need more than 12 down. And they would try to get us the 100 down still but the minimum guaranteed was 12 down.
Now some areas here have fibre optic to the house while other areas have fibre optic to the "node", some areas the difference can be just 20 meters down the road from each other.
Either way, our definition of broadband went up and then down again.
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Re:
They have the attitude that corporations produce, and customers consume. therefore customers only need enough bandwidth up to select what to consume.
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neither ISPs ?
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In the last 15 years speed has increased one thousand fold. In 15 years, 50mbps will be like 56kbps was 15 years ago.
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Re: from the high-water-mark dept
Correction: The earliest consumer-model modems (e.g. Novation CAT, Hayes Smartmodem) ran at 300 baud - roughly equivalent to 300 bits per second, not kilobits per second. You're understating how far we've come by a factor of a thousand. :)
They also predated AppleTalk (initially about 500 kbit/s) by several years - which is of questionable relevance, since AppleTalk was a LAN standard, not (directly) a telecom interface, despite the appearance of later adapters that let you use phone cables instead of Apple-proprietary cables to string up your LAN.
Source: Old enough to remember.
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