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this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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This is what I was talking about the other day, but the regressives just mass downvoted and claimed I was some kind of Trump lover. You can't just get rid of excellent technologies just because you're emotional about who runs the company.
You can't just yell and cry at Tesla dealerships, block roads or harass citizens because of whatever political justification you've got in your head. That's selfish and serves only to vindicate your personal feelings while holding back progress.
A more viable solution would have been to let Starlink build the infrastructure and then lobby for a Canadian telecommunications company to buy them out once they have the means to maintain and expand that infrastructure.
Starlink isn't the only satellite phones and internet available in Canada, not to mention all the alternatives you could get.
For example, how about cell towers? If the government paid for them, then no individual company can monopolize them, so anybody could get access to their use.
Not to mention that Spain's setting up their own satellite internet services as well Starlink style, so why pay the Trumpist when we can pay an actual ally that hasn't blatantly betrayed all their alliances and agreements?
Starlink offers the low latency that others can't provide which is needed for more real time applications and at a much more affordable rate. Maybe in the future there will be another (edit: low latency) network that rural people can rely on, but that isn't today, or tomorrow, or next year, or the year after.
More affordable for high use, sure, but this article is speaking about for emergency use, which means that you'll almost never use it. Besides, the smallest version of Starlink still requires you to carry a laptop sized satellite antennae, compared to internet phone which is literally just a mobile phone the size of some of the early bar phones. One you can carry in your pocket at all times, the other useless unless if you're with your car at minimum along with any other devices needed to make it work.
Besides that, latency matters for shit in this case anyways.
The only use for Starlink that isn't serviced by more traditional means is high speed high bandwidth internet, but it doesn't make any sense why the province should give Adolf Musk any money to do so, let alone a tenth of a billion. People who want that service can pay for it themselves while the province can provide something more suited for lower level or emergency use that costs only a fraction the price and doesn't require signing with an overgrown child that manically laughs as he helps put his own country into the toilet.
Where are you going on about emergency use? The article is talking about how this is going to impact northern first nations communities who were going to use the service for virtual court appearances which require good bandwidth and low latency.
My bad. I guess I mixed this up with something else.
Even still, the bandwidth and latency of traditional satellite internet isn't bad enough to be an issue for this. You can still stream with latency below 1s, more than enough for streaming, just not good enough for online games.
Besides, Xplore is a Canadian provider that does this already to service these areas specifically. Why go for a foreign provider when we have a perfectly serviceable local one for such a purpose? Yes, it's not a great provider, but for this use case, it is good enough and doesn't require giving a hundred million to a guy who's helping to destroy this country.
Traditional geostationary satellite latency really causes problems with real time communication which this is trying to help with. You end up in a situation where you talk over each other frequently unless you go into radio style communication of always waiting for the other person to clearly be done talking with a long pause which hampers fluid conversations. Reactions to things you hear or say become delayed making for a jarring experience.
You can do it yes, but it's subpar.
Edit: Imagine a lawyer not being able to interject properly during a court case or read non verbal queues of whats going on in court in real time.
I agree its subpar. But my question is, is the solution worth 1.5% the entire province's budget?
Connecting these homes properly is worth it, yes.
The question was always is it worth giving it to SpaceX specifically given Elons ties, or a US based company due to Trump. Xplore is US owned as well now, and was the other option.
During the pandemic
I think we should try and avoid supporting the US for the moment, but if there isn't a good alternative and the other options might seriously impact the quality of life for our citizens, then I think it's worth considering still doing it until we can work something else out.
Edit: I thought this addition would be worth while... Xplore struggled during the pandemic when usage was higher, and starlink has much higher bandwidth capabilities. If we not only want to connect but encourage people to consider living in these communities, that also means more population growth, which means more demanding usage which means Xplore struggles further.
I see. Didn't realize that Xplore wasn't Canadian anymore, nor that actual performance was that bad. I just saw some speed tests and those didn't look that bad.
That said, I still don't think we should be spending $100 million on Starlink. For the purpose its suppose to serve, I would think that we could meet all the proposed needs with single digit million at most, even if we have to rely on Starlink to do so. We taxpayers are being shafted hard by such a contract.
If private individuals want to get Starlink for their normal internet, I don't oppose such a decision since it's not like we have good alternatives for high speed satellite internet until the EU's version gets fully deployed. But that's a decision on an individual level. A provincial decision should minimize excess expenditure on something that's a pure luxury and instead concentrate on meeting the needs of its people first, since Ford is already pulling so much funding from public resources to pay for his vanity projects that keep getting rejected by the courts.
I don't know all the costs, but definitely not single digits.
15,000 (people) * 500 (dish) + 15000 * 140 (service) * 12 (months) is 37.2 million. If they help with roof installs that'd be more too.
Commercial stuff costs more, so if they connect a hospital it'd be more.
There was something in the contract about paying more to ensure guaranteed bandwidth for them as well, and I wonder if the government is helping pay for some of the ground stations it'd need which might be one time costs?
Also the government has a policy of connecting all of Canada to high speed internet which is considered 50 down, 10 up with 98% in 2026 and the rest by 2030.
https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/high-speed-internet-canada/en
Edit: to be fair though that policy isn't about paying for the end user, but it would include going towards infrastructure like ground stations, guaranteeing the bandwidth and paying for SpaceX to launch a few extra satellites to help guarantee the service.