Publicly Funded Broadband and 802.11 211
bflame writes: "The Canadian province of Alberta is building the infrastructure to provide highspeed internet service to 422 cities. The government of Alberta along with Cisco Networks, Microsoft and Axia will be installing highspeed fiber optic lines to link 422 cities. The contracts also required competition among ISPs to insure lower internet costs. Cisco provides a nice
write up in IQ magazine. Globe Technologies is
reporting that work has started on the Alberta Supernet. The government of Alberta has an article about the supernet along with this article." We've mentioned Alberta earlier - nice to see they're moving ahead with the project. And an anonymous reader sent in a link about the city of Tallahasee rolling out a public WLAN.
microsoft? (Score:1, Flamebait)
"We recommend Internet Explorer 5.0+"
I wonder how much they paid for that?
Ciryon
Re:422 cities??? (Score:2, Informative)
alberta (Score:1)
Re:alberta (Score:1)
We're also not all rednecks, although there are still a few around. You forget that Florida is not a southern state but a northern one trying to stay warm. The capital reflects that.
Re:Tallahassee (Score:1)
That and finish the campuswide wireless. Can't stray to far from my office yet. =)
Daniel
Re:alberta (Score:1)
Great pilot project (Score:1)
I'm really happy about this, although the only software company I know in Alberta is BioWare [bioware.com].
It's about time the Canadians teach Americans (and several other nationalities) how to really run government to support the people.
Re:Great pilot project (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Connectivity is too crucial. (Score:1)
Which is precisely why no BC gov't will do a damn thing to turn this province high-tech despite our misnomer as Silicon-North, Hollywood-North. It would be against all our BC principles to create a gov't that could actually work *FOR* the people in a 25 year span of mismanagement.
No-Jobs-North more like it. I think I'd like to go home to Alberta. I don't miss the 18 years of *extreme* sub-zero winters, but at least the AB gov't is working for it's constituents.
Teaches me I gotta move to Canada (Score:1)
I already live in Detroit, so you just let Windsor get a city internet. I will move my arse right across that border.
Re:Great pilot project (Score:2)
Re:Great pilot project (Score:1)
That is one seriously smart move (Score:2)
Re:That is one seriously smart move (Score:5, Informative)
There are two major providers of broadband here in Edmonton (one of two major cities in Alberta). Cable modem (www.shaw.ca) is $40 per month, and DSL is $50 per month (www.telusplanet.com).
What's so special about that? If you factor in the prices I mentioned are in Canadian dollars (about 63 cents US), you'll realize that Albertans pay just a little more than dial-up users in the US.
Even better is that my provider (Shaw) doesn't care how many machines I've got hooked up to my cable modem. I've got 10 different machines here without needing NAT or DHCP servers of my own.
The province makes the profit (Score:1)
Re:That is one seriously smart move (Score:1)
What will they use it for? (Score:1)
422 cities??? (Score:1)
Maybe 422 communities?
Canada, the broadband friendly nation (Score:3, Informative)
This will bring more jobs and more broadband, hopefully the other provinces will follow.
Re:Canada, the broadband friendly nation (Score:1)
Re:Canada, the broadband friendly nation (Score:1)
Care to mention which provider(s) have satellite broadband service in Canada? It would be nice.
spelling (Score:1)
Re:spelling (Score:1)
"Ensure" indicates effort to make it so, but no recompense is indicated.
Yadda yadda yadda.
Repeater Stations (Score:3, Funny)
Hmm... (Score:2)
This is a Good Thing (Score:4, Insightful)
There are many things which governments get involved with (eg health care) which I think they should stay out of as much as possible; but when it comes to natural monopolies I certainly see that they have a role to play.
Hadn't you noticed. (Score:2)
They are all desperately trying to get out of managing roads, rail, telecoms, education, energy, health, law and order. The only thing which they seem to want is defense. I suppose that's because the toys are bigger, more expensive and make loud noises.
This is not a good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
In 1992, I worked with a rural community of about 8,000 that wanted to launch a freenet. The local NSF regional gave us a quote of $65,000 up front plus $2,500 a month for Internet service - using a 56 Kbps leased line! (They had 35 PhDs on staff and naturally had high costs - that was their justification).
Thanks to the pioneering efforts of UUNET, CERFNET, PSI (now defunct, alas), Sprint, NEARNET/SURANET, and the folks at the Commercial Internet Exchange, the NSF monopoly (which was planned to go into a Bell-like regional with ANS and the RBOCs running the show) was broken apart. Multilateral and later, bilateral peering, became the norm. Exchange points grew (like MAE-E, MAE-W) and the commercial market blew open.
This commercialization is what also brought hundreds of millions of regular people (read "not employed by the government") onto the Internet. Not 23 years of NSFNET, but 3 years of commercial Internet.
While you'd think folks would have discovered the government model doesn't work, we still have numerous states, municipalities and even national governments trying the old way. Iowa, for instance, built a boondoggle fiber network that costs $75,000 to get a connection. Sure, you get fiber, but the Internet connectivity squeezes down to a connection no faster than an ISDN pipe at the egress to the Internet. Although the taxpayers paid for it, many of the fiber customers are leaving for - you guessed - competitive commercial service. We've got the same issues with municipalities providing broadband and having to raise electric, sewer and gas rates to cover their inefficiencies.
I really hate beating a very dead horse, but for some reason some folks like the previous poster continue to believe misnomers. The Internet isn't like a highway system and it doesn't benefit from government administration.
What it does benefit from is being offered and operated by people that focus on this and only this expertise - not people that also issue your license plates, run the welfare agencies, operate electric power, clean your sewer, etc. Being a competent ISP is not a part-time operation.
It also benefits from competition, since this is usually about the only motivator for most folks.
*scoove*
Re:This is not a good thing (Score:1)
The point is, what's good for the united states is not neccesarily good for Canada, and vice versa. I believe you when you say your country could not pull this off; but if you mean to imply that we can't, you're wrong. Theoretically it can be done and it can be done well.
That having been said, I know a few people who were recruited from where I work now to go work for Axia, the company mainly responsible for building the network, and they were bottom of the barrel staff here. If you've ever seen that comercial where a couple guys go around in vans and round up a bunch of random people to get $100 for 15 minutes work, in order to staff their IT department, that's basically what's going on over at Axia.
In theory this can be done and it can be very effectively, however, I have little to no faith in Axia to do so, they have been desparately hiring very poor staff.
Re:This is not a good thing (Score:2)
Yes, and as discussed earlier in the thread, this is no different than the NSFNET NAP proposal in the early 90s - creating regional exchange points (owned and operated by RBOCs), establishing a national transport entity (e.g. ANS) for inter-exchange traffic, and the creation of an exchange arrangement preferably favoring measured use charges over time at the exchanges for "all suppliers."
Of course, the RBOCs would likely have lower costs and charges when interconnecting at their own facility and would likely wield the same anticompetitive influences as they do in the rest of their markets (recall the fate of competitive DSL in the past 2 years?).
Thankfully, the open market sidestepped this monstrosity. Apparently all the NSF socialists moved to central Canada and sold them a bill of goods.
*scoove*
Re:This is a Good Thing (Score:2)
Re:This is a Good Thing (Score:2)
There are techniques to minimise the impact a single person can have, but this is still going to be an issue. And the more differences there are between the way the road behaves and the way the internet behaves the less your analogy holds.
Also, it's not clear that this is a natural monopoly; the wireless internets are shaping up to be final mile technologies to bridge onto the ISPs that provide access to the internet backbones. The wireless internets can have firewalls around the internet(!) and provide tunnelling to allow their customers access.
That also means that there may not be monopolies in the long run.
Re:This is a Good Thing (Score:3, Insightful)
The cost of connecting 422 small towns is vastly smaller than 422 times the cost of hooking up one small town.
Re:This is a Good Thing (Score:1)
To strenghten my point: broadband access is currently offered via copper wire, coax cable and satellite. Funny natural monopoly...
Re:This is a Good Thing (Score:2)
How do you figure that? Last time I looked at the question, the amount of cable it takes to connect N random points within a given region scales as approximately O(sqrt(N)). IOW, the cost would be cut by approximately a factor of 20.
Re:This is a Good Thing (Score:2)
Exactly, and I'm afraid you're still not going to see a competent reply to the question.
In case it wasn't obvious from my post further up the thread, my occupation has been in telecom for the past 13+ years. Recently, I've been working in the rural broadband market and have been coming across municipalities that are adding high-speed Internet to their offering of electricity, water, sewer, natural gas, etc.
Many of these guys have extended into propane and fuel oil sales, telephone service, cable television, and now high-speed (usually over cable).
While the arguments for this extension of focus include "lowering costs because the same fixed cost from office, admin, billing, etc. can be spread over yet another service offering" and "we should do it because we care more about our customers," I've yet to find one that doesn't end up subsidizing from their monopoly markets to cover losses in the competitive ones.
For instance, we've got a muni in Iowa that has all of the above services. Their electric rates are now $0.09/kwh (where the power company in the same town but providing service outside of town to a more expensive, less population-dense rural base, is $0.06/kwh!). Water and sewer rates are also at least 50% greater than neighboring communities that represent a decent comparison.
According to state law, it's illegal for them to subsidize the cable TV, phone and Internet. But any competent accountant can show you dozens of ways to apply the costs while staying legal.
I guess it all comes down to a lesson every business person should learn - the lesson of focus. Treat every business area as a unique discipline, and remember that you've got competitors out there who spend 100% of their time exclusively focused on that one area - being as competent as they can be.
You and I couldn't reasonably expect to be the best IP engineer if we only spent 3 hours a week on the subject, splitting it with time spent on 20 other disciplines. So why should a company expect otherwise? Attempt them all, and do them all poorly.
To strenghten my point: broadband access is currently offered via copper wire, coax cable and satellite.
And don't forget microwave and fixed wireless... works well for our communities (and kicks the holy crap out of the state fiber network).
*scoove*
Re:Govenrments Should Govern (Score:2)
I'm certain that some people would make such arguments. But are those arguments any more valid than would be arguments asserting that pornographic magazines should not be distributed via a publicly funded and owned highway system?
Public policy should be decided on the basis of what is right, not on the basis of the invalid arguments which might arise from such policy.
Re:Govenrments Should Govern (Score:2)
Who ever said anything about subsidizing internet access? A government-owned monopoly != a government-subsidized service.
I think that the government should run fiber-optics everywhere, but I also think people should pay to use it. (And that includes ISPs which want to lease fiber; while I think government should be involved in providing the raw fiber I am far from convinced that they should get involved in IP packet switching.)
Ashland, Oregon municipal fiber network (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.ashlandfiber.net/
This is serving as the basis for a community wireless network. Businesses and individuals will hook 802.11b nodes up to their connections to the public broadband network and open it up to guest access by anyone within range. The goal it to get enough people involved to cover the whole town with WiFi.
http://www.ashlandunwired.com/
Good to see! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not to say that *every* unprofitable service should be provided but the internet is becoming increasingly important to modern society. The first communities to get these ubiquitous connections will start to be seen as high-tech communities. The rest will fall behind. They'll get it eventually, but by then it won't be any more special than the telephone. It'll snowball. As more tech-savvy (and high income) people move into the area, they'll increase demand for more tech-services.
Well, that's what I think anyway. OK, I'm dreaming. This is making Australia (where I am) look even more backwards. This will be really interesting to follow.
Re:Good to see! (Score:2)
Yeah, the whole computer software industry sure failed to develop. Microsoft works much better as a government-run corporation.
Actually, for anyone here who thinks their monopoly stinks (rightly so), just imagine if they WERE government run and funded all these years. At least Windows (in theory) works, and the possibility exists for competition. Try making Linux illegal and see how far it gets.
Did you read my post?! (Score:2)
Technology Rolling Along? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) There are only 3 non-overlapping channels in 802.11b. Are all of the transmitter sites going to occupy just one of those, or will they use all of them to overlap and maximize coverage? How will this interact with private WLANs?
2) 802.11b is a stepping stone to future wireless LAN/WAN/etc technologies and a primitive one at that. Building a whole infrastructure around it is crazy. (see also: the reason North America is still on CDMA/TDMA)
I've seen a large number of projects crop up locally trying to connect all kinds of things with 802.11b... government facilities, hospitals, etc. Even my company is using it now to link our buildings. It's going to be very crowded with only 3 channels and no one to coordinate the whole mess.
Private WLANS become part of the network (Score:2)
As to who's going to co-ordinate it, well, you join up or fade into the background noise.
Re:Technology Rolling Along? (Score:1)
This does seem particularly short-sighted. Why not 4? At least with 4 you can use the 4-colour theorem to guarantee lack of overlap on our approximately-planar surface of interest...
Re:Technology Rolling Along? (Score:2)
Re:Technology Rolling Along? (Score:1)
Or, perhaps a meshed network would be an idea like Nokia's Rooftop solution [nokia.com].
The real shocker here... (Score:5, Funny)
... but that the province of Alberta actually has 422 cities!
(In fact, according to this google cached page, [google.com] there are only 9 cities over 25,000 population!)
Color me amazed!
-RT
Re:The real shocker here... (Score:2)
Hamlet, village, town, city are decided by two factors: Provincial law (say, anything 10K or over must be a city) and local preference (we're at 5500, over the minimum; do we want to be a town or a city?).
The actual figures (minimum & maximum population) will vary from province to province.
It affects whether you are under provincial or local jurisdiction (eg water quality, traffic laws); your ability to raise taxes, ability to borrow money, pass certain kinds of bylaws, zoning, administer schools, etc.
Each local area must decide by vote (if there's a choice) and it basically boils down to how much control you want vs. how much money & services you get, and whether you have to raise the cash yourself or the province pays.
Public Money for Wireless access (Score:2, Funny)
Wireless clarification (Score:1)
I live in Edmonton, and I've only ever heard it described as a huge all-inclusive fibre optic network to every Alberta community. Perhaps they'll use wireless in the [two] dense cities. I look forward to some more specific details from Axia, the company contracted to lay down the infrastructure.
I'm moving out of the province in the summer, after being here for six years. Ow, the irony.
Why does Microsoft has its fingers in this? (Score:2)
They associate their name with the venture (Score:2)
Re:Why does Microsoft has its fingers in this? (Score:1)
Here in Taiwan I bought cable modem access from a Giga broadband which is indeed affiliated with Gigabyte motherboards. Anyway, this cable modem venture was largely funded --I heard 40%-- by MS. And it seemed the "value" that MS had added was propietary drivers for the Surfboard cable modems. We ended up having to run our Linux stuff behind a windows proxy. But even if MS is planning the same game in Canada, I'm sure all those clever Canadians will hack something up.
Re:Why does Microsoft has its fingers in this? (Score:1)
Getting priorities straight (Score:2, Offtopic)
Yes, this is a cool tech project, yadda yadda.
However, the alberta government is doing this at the same time as they are introducing budget cuts to other little things like hospitals... The public school teachers are on strike (and the government claims there isn't any more money to pay them)... if we killed this project, I wonder if all the money that is going into this could do some real good, in more essential areas
(I mean, it's not exactly hard to get high speed internet in most of the province already!)
Re:Getting priorities straight (Score:2, Interesting)
The teachers are on strike because they are greedy.
For two months before the strike, all we heard about was "salaries, salaries, salaries! We want more money!".. so the government offered enough money to make them the highest paid teachers in the country, which the teachers REJECTED.
Then the day before the strike, they switch their tune to "quality of education, smaller class sizes - oh, and more money!" instead. I saw an interview with the head of the teachers union, in which he claimed they wanted better working conditions - then at the end of the interview, was asked "what would it take to prevent this strike?" and the reply was "the government could give us the 22% raise we asked for."
Re:Getting priorities straight (Score:3, Interesting)
And if you dig even deeper, you find out that the reason that offer was rejected was that the money the government offered was to be pulled from funding previously earmarked for the classrooms.
Do they want more money? Damn straight. After all, the nurses got a 20-25% pay raise - conveniently just before election time, doctors got a 20-25% pay raise - conveniently just before election time, and the government even gave themselves a nice 15%-20% pay raise - conveniently just after election time. (They claim 10% but remember that MLA pay isn't taxable). The teachers see that and want some of that action. Who can really blame them? Personally, I don't think they're worth that much more either, but I can see their point.
But they don't want it at the expense of the classroom - unlike King Klein.
That's nice... (Score:4, Informative)
It's a nice project, and a huge cash cow for the big ISPs and hardware providers, but there is still room for the little guy to get a peice of the action
.
Re:That's nice... (Score:1)
www.communitynet.ca [communitynet.ca]has mmany of the details.
I've even been privilaged to using one of these connections, and holy crap are they fast! The one I was using was 10mbit/10mbit, which results in download speeds around 1Meg/sec
Plus, these are being used in diverse environments. The Saskatchewan board of education and Sun are working together putting computers in the classrooms. Sun provides hardware, usually an E250 or E450, and a shitload of SunRays for the classes. The school must provide a technician, that Sun trains to work on them. It's a great deal for everyone. The schools get computers for cheap, the tech's get free training, and Sun gets a generation of children trained to work on Solaris.
Wasn't this the plan of the federal government? (Score:1)
State of world broadband; Canada could leapfrog us (Score:4, Insightful)
First off we have the USA and Japan, broadband coverage isn't too bad in these countries, although rural coverage is somewhat patchy. Canada is one-uping both of these countries.
Germany is third. As of the start of 2002, Germany had 1.8 million DSL subscribers. For a country with a net population of something around 10 million, this is pretty good.
Next is the United Kingdom, my home country, which puts up the most pitiful broadband attempt of any of the top 20 countries by GNP. There are places 15 miles from LONDON that can't even get DSL yet. British Telecom has pretty much said that any telco exchanges not being converted to provide DSL by 2005 probably won't be done forever.. the demand is too low.
Unlike the Canadian government, the British government is keen for everyone to have broadband, but doesn't actually want to help. They believe that private enterprise will get there, and don't want to risk getting their hands dirty (a la Millennium Dome)
So, well done Canada. I think Canada will leapfrog us all, and with e-government and a 90%> wireup rate throughout the country, it could actually jump up the GNP tables and become a serious industrial contender this century. Heck, the tiny Netherlands did it in the 1700s.
Re:State of world broadband; Canada could leapfrog (Score:1)
Re:State of world broadband; Canada could leapfrog (Score:2)
I believe Singapore is far ahead of any of the nations you mentioned.
http://www.sgbroadband.com.sg/broadba
Re:State of world broadband; Canada could leapfrog (Score:2)
For example, I know people in the *Yukon* who have broadband. You're talking an area at least a thousand miles away from any place that would be called a 'city' in European terms!
I am not quite so familiar with other provinces, but I hear that Ontario and Quebec also have broadband pretty far out into the sticks.
Re:State of world broadband; Canada could leapfrog (Score:2)
They've been getting their TV from home sattelites for 30 years; phone networks are not based on landlines, etc. If a rural resident (which in the Yukon means "doesn't live in Whitehorse") has a telephone and a computer, it's almost certainly a sat-based TV/broadband service they're hooked up to.
Satellite phones are nearly as common in the Yukon as regular cellphones are in many urban areas (recent trouble by Qualcomm, etc hasn't affected Canadian customers, just like Iridium continued for a year in Canada after US customers where cut off).
For those in Whitehorse (a town composed of college-educated administrators and young, single men, typically transplants from somewhere else in Canada and there for the work; the Yukon has Canada's highest average income) they get broadband from the same Teleco and Cable firms that operate in BC and Alberta.
In other words, this is the land of early communications adopters.
Re:State of world broadband; Canada could leapfrog (Score:2)
And this differs from the US how?
Although hardly original, Canada excels at confiscating the personal property of its citizens and repurposing it. Too lazy to work? No problem! We'll give hoser free health care. Don't feel like paying cost for broadband? We'll give it to you for half (though it really costs us four times as much as the private sector - but hey, it's not our money! Hahaha)
Once again, how does this differ from the US? Ever hear of Medicaid? The Medicaid system is far larger and more expensive than Canada's health care system, and it is being expanded.
You've demonstrated an amazing ignorance of what a nanny-state the US truly is. At least the Canucks are getting something out of it. In the US you pay comparable taxes, which are immediately sent to Israel. Enjoy!!
Re:State of world broadband; Canada could leapfrog (Score:2)
Not true at all. Between fixed-wireless (and NLOS developments coming to market now - finally!), DSL, satellite service, cable modems and potential power-line technology, there's a solution.
If you're not serviced yet, you're dealing with a problem of "too small to be of interest yet" - something that'll be solved as the bigger markets get built out.
After all, if you had to choose between two otherwise identical jobs - one paying $80K/year and one paying $12K/year, we know which one you'd pick. Service providers are no different - and since it usually takes us a year or more to recover our capital investment, we must focus on the bigger markets first (or else go out of business).
Regarding your biting the bullet and getting a T1, I'd suggest you check first. We've come into towns that have had multi-billion dollar corporations with food processing plants that have been trying to get a single T1 for 2-3 years (to no avail). No amount of lobbying can get the incumbant to upgrade and provide service.
Find a competent fixed wireless company and offer them a hilltop or a water tower and see how your luck changes.
*scoove*
Re:Population of Germany: 83,029,536 (Score:2)
Bell Intrigna and the Province of Manitoba (Score:2, Informative)
Wondering how much we pay for dsl? Try 19.95 for the first 6 months (~1.2Mbps down, 256kbps up) then the price is 39.95 each month after that. Free install and startup kit included, of course. How about them apples.
The use of the word "cities" is a little strong in the article... I'd imagine some of the communities have less than 100 people.
A smart move (Score:3, Insightful)
What many people fail to see is that by doing this, you'll draw young people into the world of computer science and other badly-needed fields, like engineering, physics and chemistry. Giving young kids the access to the vast resources that the Internet has to offer is going to encourage them to use the technology and become skilled with it, and that's the first step to a 21st-century workforce. Schools are laden with psyc, business and communications majors, none of whom are helping the estimated half-million job vacancies in high-tech job positions in the US alone. But get kids motivated and interested in technology, and even if a small percentage of them becomes so enamoured of it that they choose it as a career, Alberta is developing a very, very educated and desired workforce. This brings jobs and investment to the province.
I honestly cannot see why the US doesn't do this more. Kids' education here, let's face it, is suspect, and those that do graduate won't touch engineering and science (hence the glut of comms and psyc majors searching low-paying jobs in the market right now). But light the spark of interest in technology by granting them access to these resources, and reap the rewards many hundred fold in the future.
Socialists (Score:1, Troll)
I'm just interested in why anyone would want the government to handle those sort of domestic industries.
Re:Socialists (Score:1)
This might be a troll, but i'll just say that calling the Alberta government socialist is like calling Chairman Mao a freedom loving capitalist! The province of AB is probably the most right wing province in Canada (well, except now maybe BC...).
Re:Socialists (Score:1)
Re:Socialists (Score:1)
as usual, we get so caught up in government vs business that freedom gets lost in the mix.
Re:Socialists (Score:2)
Re:Socialists. No way, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Whoa there, Mr. Rebublican. Two hops short of Cuba? Don't think so. We are as democratic as they come (well, almost).
This is a Canadian thing, you see. Our country is so big with so little population thay we are forced to be communictaions intensive. Yup, lots of our infrestructure is government mandated, but it needs to be - otherwise, it just wouldn't get done. Private Industry wouldn't do it, and well they shouldn't, since there's not much profit to be made. However, we as a country essentially need top shelf communications like this in order to remain a country, since we wouldn't speak to each other much otherwise. It may sound weird to USAians, but it's good for us - like universal public health care. I for one look forward to conversing with my Albertan comapatriots over High Speed bit-pipes - it brings us closer.
So, at the risk of being a jingoist,
Take off, eh?
Soko
PS - Maybe you're just miffed at the Hockey Gold we won.
Re:Socialists. No way, eh? (Score:2)
Re:Socialists. No way, eh? (Score:1)
Setting up your own generator is one thing. Running a fiber-optic cable through 800 km of field and bush is something else entirely.
Re:Socialists (Score:2)
This is flamebait.
I'm just interested in why anyone would want the government to handle those sort of domestic industries.
Maybe for the same reason that governements have handled other kinds of infrastructure projects (interstate highway system, rural electrification project, etc.). Because the government can bring a service somewhere that the market alone wouldn't touch.
Re:Socialists (Score:2)
Re:Socialists (Score:2)
What makes it flamebait is not the fact that I don't like it, but the fact that it is so far removed from the truth that most reasonable people would disagree with it. I can't think of any reasonable person who can realistically compare communist Cuba with the democratically elected government of Canada.
That aside, rural electrification could have been done by private groups(read not industry) without having been force-fed.
Maybe, maybe not. It's pretty easy to speculate about all kinds of alternate history, but the fact is, that's not what happened. And, I don't think that anybody is suggesting that rural electrification was a failure, even if the government was the instigator.
directory of public wireless networks? (Score:1)
Re:directory of public wireless networks? (Score:1)
Check out http://www.wirelesstcp.com/best/compare.html [wirelesstcp.com] for a list of private WISP's.
Smart way to take control (Score:3, Interesting)
What's particularly interesting is that governments typically have not taken control of means of communications where private industry has been successful. Sure, there's the Postal service, but AFAIK, that wasn't a government take over, it was a government-inspired service (at least the Pony Express part). Somebody correct me if I'm wrong here.
Governments could have provided free newspaper, telegraph, radio, telephone, and television services, but they typically haven't done this to the exclusion of private enterprise. They tend to stick to things like sewers, water, roads - things that can really only be accomplished by local governments.
Re:Smart way to take control (Score:2)
But, you should realise that the government of Alberta is rich, rich, rich.
Unlike the US, Canadian provinces own all the land and minerals in the jurisdiction.
Alberta has huge Oil resources (taxed at the lowest rate vs. other provinces; there's just so much of it the money keeps rolling in), the lowest taxes in Canada (lowest income tax; there is talk of eliminating it, least public Health Care support, no sales tax, etc), and literally Many $ Billions in the bank (the Alberta Heritage Fund, based on the premise that Oil is depleteable and money should be saved for a "rainy day").
These guys are both politically and financially conservative.
Alberta politicians are the most right-wing, free enterprise-friendly in the Canada. It is typically referred to as "the Bible Belt"; the country was run for decades by a fiercely conservative government founded by a preacher; his legacy has not abated.
They have elected conservative (read: Republican in the US) goverments without exception for virtually all of the Province's history (created 1905).
Most, if not all North American jurisdictions simply don't have the cash, but they do.
The issue with Albertans is more about whether Broadband is important enough to spend money on; ie is there an economic benifit that outweighs the value of keeping it in the bank to offset the inevitable higher taxes when the oil runs out a century from now (and they have to start raising money like a "regular" Government, conservative or otherwise).
The really suprising thing about this initiative is not that it's publicly funded but rather that such a Conservative administration decided to spend anything at all.
Corps are moving to slowly (Score:2)
They don't care about milking every extra ounce of profit out of their costumers, and won't market your personal information to the highest bidder (ala my DSL provider, Ameritech).
Besides, high speed internet is eventually going to end up being a psuedo utility anyway. Just like water and power we won't think twice about there being an always on Internet port in every house.
-josh
Please come to Nova Scotia! (Score:3, Insightful)
Highly unlikely I know, given the current financial situation in this poor little corner of Canada. Government overspending and mismanagment for the 21st century!
In NS you basically have 2 choices for residential service (even in the city), Cable and DSL... depending on where you live your connection quality varies greatly and if you're outside the urban areas you're pretty much stuck with crappy dialup. Now if the government were to rollout a supernet-style plan to hook up the rest of the province just think of the benefits... reduced strain on the phone network since there are less people using dialup, more competition for broadband services and more people online... the list goes on.
It's good to see that not all provincial governments are card-carrying luddites.
War-driving just got a lot more interesting... (Score:1)
I have to wonder: Have the cities and governments deploying this given the slightest possible thought to a little thing called "security?" To the already well-known flaws in WEP and 802.11?
Oh, wait. These are GOVERNMENT agencies I'm referring to. Never mind...
Re:War-driving just got a lot more interesting... (Score:1)
This is a great thing (Score:2)
Somewhere, somehow, some individual realized that the only way Alberta would prosper in the future is to move away from being a natural resource (ie: oil) centric economy into a more diversified one.
There is a lot of hoo-hah about wiring up schools, hospitals and government services, but the underlying fact is that broadband is the railway of this century.
I know that our business stands to benefit enormously from this initiative. We are located in Edmonton (Alberta's capital city) but have manufacturing facilities outside of the city. We would desperately love to have a better connection to our facilities but cannot. Dial-up VPNs are just too painful to contemplate.
Now, I can see either having a DSL connection or a 802.11a/b connection within 2 years. Fscking-A, to say the least.
The more I read about the Alberta Supernet project, the happier I am that I live in this province.
It's not just about being able to serve
Know your admin (Score:2)
Not THAT big... (Score:1)
Hats off to them, though... This is a HUGE geographical area they are covering. I think that it's the geographical size, as opposed to the number of people, that makes this project impressive.
Public Money, Private Profit (Score:1)
It kind of reminds me of what happens in college, when pharamcutical companies 'developed' new drugs from students' work.
Oh but, it's nice of the Government to fund these ventures, because that's 'Free Trade'. (Targeted more at the US, than elsewhere).
Clarifications (Score:1)
Second, the government does not and will not own or run the project. The government is acting as a big customer: rural libraries, schools, hospitals etc. will pay for the service, to make the private Supernet project's infrastructure viable. The bandwidth then becomes available to people residing in rural communities as well, through private ISPs.
Municipal networks...as weed killers (Score:1)
In the meantime, what's going on with community wireless in Chicago? NADA! Everyone is waiting for the government handout. Government handouts mean government control.
Government promises of free (beer) Internet will deter free (speech) networks from forming.
(kostenlos = free (beer), freiheit = free (speech). I like german)
Now, as I am not involved with Chicago politics much, if someone wants to correct me on the Chicago facts, I'd be happy to hear it.
you say tomato i say tomato (Score:1)
to link 422 cities
Let me see, 3 million people, 422 cities, that is what? 7109 people per city. Well, it is a foreign culture, we do have different words for things up here. You say City, we say Town. Same difference.
Maybe bflame could come visit us [theonion.com] some time, broaden his horizons a bit.
Seriously, though, I think you have to go Mainland China to find a province with more then 400 cities.
This is being done in Allegheny county MD (Score:1)
Priorities (Score:1)
One thing not mentioned, that is typical of the Alberta government with their 'bold' and 'innovative' money making ideas, is the fact that these cables have to be laid in the ground. I haven't dug out my topographical maps but it looks to me like a lot of these internet access areas intersect or encompass native land claims/reserves. I'm sure that the government will whip up public support for the project in the media before any native protests are heard so they'll be easily quashed and ignored.
"Who cares about them damnass backward injuns, eh, I need my high-speed in-ter-net"
Re:Priorities (Score:2)
This is now entrenched in law; the Supreme Court has ruled that any aboriginal or treaty right may be infringed to develop the social and economic resources or infastructure of Canada.
Part of the reason the Supreme Court had to make a ruling at all is that each and every band in Canada negotiated a specific, individual treaty and therefore they are all unique.