Did no one in the replies happen to notice that this is a loan
It's a federal loan. Meaning there are probably very favorable terms. Things like principle forgiveness, "negative interest" (yes that's a thing that has happened, at least in the US), etc. There becomes a point where it is essentially no different than free money.
Terms that only corporations and uber-wealthy get. And maybe some local municipalities if your state isn't a complete shithole.
Says right in the article that the rate is 9%, and they give up a 10% stake in the company.
I got better terms than that on a CAR loan last month...
"$2.14 billion for a local company?! why don't we just have a foreign billionaire do it for $2.09 billion and then another $1 billion when he fucks it up?"
It's an easy reaction to have when you only read the headline. But if you do the math, Starlink already provides service to most of the north at less than $200/mo per person. There are less than 120k people in the northern territories. That 2.2bn works out to something like 85 years of Starlink service per person in the north (assuming everyone there needs an individual dish, which isn't the case). Myself and a couple of other commentors have done some looking into Telesat as a company and they launched one (1) LEO "test sat" in 2018 and haven't done a fucking thing since to get northern people online in a timely fashion.
If you actually talk to people who live in the north most of them who can afford to already have Starlink, because it works far better than Xplore which was the only option previously, for many years. Most northern mining, logging, and oil camps are also getting their workers online with Starlink and have been for a few years already.
I've not a fan of Elon, or the canadian libs, or the conservative party. But this whole discussion is kinda bullshit. As far as I'm concerned Elon Musk is guillotine lube, top of the list. The day after he is beheaded, Starlink as a company will continue operating. Which, frankly, is best-case scenario. idk what else to say about that.
I think you calculated 85 months, not years, which are almost exactly 7 years.
You may want to double-check that math ;)
I think Starlink is stealing our sky and every C- level in the company should be shot and their holdings seized and sold to fund running fiber cables or whatever to rural communities.
I believe this to be a fair and equitable compromise between our positions, hbu?
LEO internet is not sustainable and should be banned.
If you want satellite internet geosync is way better. The only downside is latency but it's not worth destroying the planet and ruining astronomy globally over.
This. I was about to write the same.
Fuck Starlink and their absurd amount of satellites. Why are things that are bad on paper still out into practice and then get people to talk about it as if its the next best thing after sliced bread? 5 Geo orbit satellites do the same and more than an entire fleet of star link satellites that would ruin Astronomy forever, not to mention the pollution, high cost, and now having these stupid dots fly visibly through the sky at night. These satellites will fall out of the sky within a decade due to their low orbit so continously require more launches to resupply them, adding pollution over pollution. None of this is even mentioning the risk for a full scale Kessler syndrome with this trash.
Fully agree, Starlink (and others like it) should be forbidden
Don't worry next we're going to solve the non-existent problem of metal scarcity by dragging the ocean floor. Even though it will obliterate entire ecosystems built around the nodules we're going to mine. All so a billionaire can become a multi billionaire.
Elliptical orbits are perfect for polar regions, both Leo and geo are inevitability going to suffer more than a well covered elliptical
Destroying the planet? And geosync doesn't work period. What could have been done is the money that was given to the telecoms actually be used to run fiber to everyone that they promised...
Yes. Burning debris in the upper atmosphere has unknown effets on the environment, plus the exploitation of rare earth metal that cannot be recycled and the energy expenditure. Musk want to burn more satellites per year than what we ever launched prior to this, and every other greedy company wants to follow suit with their own junk.
The paper someone links to, shows that meteoroids already dump more than 11.7k metric tons into the atmosphere every year. We know what effects it has.
You can’t reach everywhere with fibre. Some areas of the far north are too remote and too sparsely populated for it to ever make sense to put in fibre, and it will remain that way for the foreseeable future.
This deal provides critical infrastructure to those places while not binding us to the whims of an egotistical fascist asshole.
This is where I am. If he just stepped back and followed the laws for whichever region he was providing service in, I wouldn't have a problem with it being provided by an egotistic asshole. But he has done other than that a number of times, and that's a problem. All this ignores the national security issues, which people should have gotten a refresher on during COVID with the N95 mask issues.
Sometimes the more expensive option just makes sense if national security is a factor.
I'm pretty sure you're conflating the American situation with the Canadian one. America gave various telecoms about $4 billion to expand their networks, with which they did nothing. Canada did other stupid things, such as put a program in place to increase rural broadband in 2019, which is really late to the game, or, in Manitoba, where I live, just give a fiber network laid by a government-owned utility to a local ISP.
Research Xplore-net and circle back to this. The feds poured all kinds of subsidies into this shitty company and it's never been more than a joke among anyone who's ever had to use it. ETA look up hundreds (and thousands that didn't post to the internet) cases like this one where Xplore-net users bailed en masse for Starlink as soon as possible and got fucked around for months with their cancellation and billing workflows.
I can't find it but I'm reasonably sure I remember Xplore-net asking for a bailout or subsidy funding due to their customers fleeing around lockdowns. I'll post it if I can find it.
ETA #2 lol Canadian Broadband Firm Xplore In Talks to Receive Fresh Financing
I mean, moving beyond the loan part, (not a grant, meaning that we will get the money back), is this not what the Canadian population wants? The govt investing money to provide alternative options to the big 3 for internet?
Call me jaded, but I imagine they'll get bought up in 5-10 by Robellus, but it's a step in the right direction.
Beyond that, do we really want our critical infrastructure tied to a company with such a shoddy and unpredictable "face man"?
I want a public fibre network, not for-profit space junk.
Well you're not going to get a fibre network, public or private, in the far north. Not happening.
Massive towers and directional dishes is probably a better approach than LEO satellites though
This is exactly what we want. Fuck the conservatives and Musk.
Also the cost of starlink is well known, I looked into it and found it to not be affordable for our situation myself and decided against it. It's a few hundred for the equipment itself and then I believe at the time it was around $140 a month.
You can buy used dishes online for as little as 100 bucks and get the account transferred over to your name. Source; bought a dish for less than 100 bucks and got it transferred to my account. You don't have to pay full price for the equipment. And I don't know where you live but even in a major city you're paying roughly 120/mo for decent broadband internet. If you're doing a budget plan you can get it for half that, if you want fuckin 1.5mbps upload speeds lmfao.
I live within 20 kilometers of a major city. My options for high-speed were 5/1 DSL for $75 or Starlink, with the costs you described. I suppose 5 megabits would be enough if I limited myself to non-streaming services or only one person using those services at a time, but anyone who thinks that was a reasonable alternative in 2023 probably isn't participating in the modern technological world, either.
Sure on the surface going with Elon's plan may be less costly. But like a deal with the devil, you realize the cost is more than money.
The cost is Elon deciding when his system will actually work for customers
The cost is Elon flouting laws and courts as it suits him
The cost is Elon considering himself above all laws internationally
He is going to put himself over Canadians every single time if we allow ourselves to rely on him. Sure you can have a contract that says keep the price fixed or whatever, but Elon will need to be dragged kicking and screaming to enforce anything.
Conservatives only deal with what's on the surface so everything past your first sentence will mean nothing to them.
What's up with his purple arm?
Bro needs a doctor lmao
Of course the conservatives want that unreliable tempered man in charge of our communications where new customers got unexpectedly charged a $100 fee.
Pray he does not alter the deal any further
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