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by justanotherc 2278 days ago
25mbs is bad?! Lol I would KILL for that -- here in small-town Canada I'm still on DSL that tops out at 12mbs. My dad who's on a farm gets six through a point to point connection that he pays an arm and a leg for -- although he's shortly getting an LTE connection at 25.

Last week they started laying cable down my street, so it seems pretty soon I'll be able to join the modern world.

3 comments

It's very regional. A while back someone here on HN was trying to tell everyone how easy and affordable it was to get 10Gb fiber these days and didn't seem to be aware of how ridiculous that statement was. Sure enough, when challenged they produced a link to a company that assured me they could not service my company's area, which not only isn't rural but is also a stone's throw away from a rather large IT company who's name you'd definitely recognize.

Hell, my company has several branch locations which are relegated to point-to-point wireless links in the sub-Mb range.

My parents live 75 km away from Montreal. It's a small, somewhat isolated town, but still: it's not remote in any sense of the word.

Their only broadband option is LTE (and data prices in Canada are through the roof) or satellite (also expensive).

From what they're telling me, people from the area formed a co-op and got government funding to lay fiber. Except now that it's happening, incumbent telecomms also want a piece of the pie, doing everything in their power to lobby, slow things down through the CRTC and give them time to put their own systems in place before the co-op.

Also in Canada here, albeit the big-city part - our telecommunications sector is uniquely bad in terms of bandwidth / service for value and consumer choice.

We have organizations like Internet Society Canada (https://internetsociety.ca/) that are aiming to help change that, but it's an uphill battle.