When I was looking into the various options (numerous as they are, ha ha), I was really impressed with how the business model is socialized in terms of the infrastructure costs (I can't imagine the actual cost per user in Grise Fiord...wow), and also by the delivery model, i.e. having local boots on the ground everywhere in a way that's accessible to end users. Mind shooting me an e-mail if you get a minute? I'm paul.wye at osgoode dot yorku dot ca.

This company's name is indeed a palindrome - most specifically the entity providing Internet service to the communities is. I work for the company that manages operates the network. We have been doing far north and otherwise remote earth station installation and Internet provision for many years now. Both backhaul and last mile. We've developed a fairly unique skill set around this exact challenge. We are northerners ourselves, and no one else was coming in and bringing Internet to these places for us, so we did it ourselves.

Can I assume this company's name is a palindrome? I ask because I've lately become very interested in the technology used to power broadband in the Northern communities (both the local distribution and the satellite backhaul). Your comment here is quite informative, thanks for posting :)

If you have a large enough dish and transmitter, on C-Band, and you have a satellite with the right coverage footprint, it's really no problem at all going beyond 70 degrees. The company I work for provides high speed Internet service into Grise Fiord, Nunavut at 76.4N on Anik F2. There is a limit of course, but 70 degrees is not it. It's really a question of throwing adequate resources at the problem (dish size, and power). It's also possible to get fairly respectable bandwidth out of C-Band if you are able to use higher MODCODs (as a result of having adequate dish size and transmitter power). You can get >90Mbps on a full transponder of C-Band with 16APSK 8/9.

I'm going to call you out on a couple of things here.

1. It's true that there are no wind turbines (of which I'm aware) in the Muskoka region, where I'm from. This almost certainly has a lot less to do with the fact that it's an affluent area than the fact that there's no location in the district that comes to mind which would be suitable for a wind farm of any size; it's just not a very (consistently) windy place. By comparison, the Bruce wind farms or the Wolfe Island wind farm are adjacent to large bodies of water and are thus able to take advantage of the more consistent wind. People who build wind farms actually study this kind of thing, and they don't build turbines where there isn't enough wind for them.

2. You know what Muskoka does have, though? Hydro-electric dams. And they've been there a long time, longer than any Ontario wind turbine of which I am aware, by a margin of several decades. They're situated on rivers, obviously, and I suppose you could argue that they're a blight on the landscape. One of them sits at the foot of downtown Bracebridge. I'm sure that, all other things being equal, it would be nice to not have it there. But it's there because, over a century ago, we figured out that we need electrical power in order to live our lives the way we want to live them (and that's much, much more true today than it was then). I presume they understood that a hydro dam was the less-distasteful option relative to, say, a coal plant, so they built the damn thing. So your assertion that the affluent areas of the province are somehow excluded from consideration during the site-selection process is, I think, incorrect.

3. The CANDU reactor is absolutely a solid, safe design, particularly given its age. But you'd seriously prefer to have one of them in your backyard, instead of a wind turbine?

Please.

Thanks for the incredibly informative comment. The OPs topic is obviously critically important (and, speaking as a Canadian, just another item added to the long list of reasons we're collectively shaking our heads at your government, even if ours is not exactly a gem). But some of the technical background is incredibly interesting to me, as is the information about Alaska generally. I'm fascinated by almost every fact I learn about the state, and it's on my list of places to visit.

The thing that really jumped out at me, though: you have a Rotax-powered airplane that you fly (or flew) **in Alaska**? Aren't those things notoriously unreliable, even once you get them going? And isn't an unreliable plane in an incredibly unforgiving environment a bit of a scary prospect?

Cheers,

-Paul

As much as I'd like to be able to say "Of course there was no prohibition in Canada! We know what's what," it would be inaccurate to say that alcohol was legal in Canada--or, at least, that it always was. A quick glance at the Wikipedia article suggests it took 50+ years to actually get prohibition enacted, though some areas adopted it much earlier, while our French province overwhelmingly rejected the idea (~80%; what can I say, Quebec knows how to have fun).

Now, that being said: a few little pockets of the country notwithstanding, it lasted only a few years before everyone sort of collectively acknowledged that it was a joke and the laws were repealed.

On that last note, cue the discussion on the legalization of pot...

Wow, nice to know that those of us in Canada aren't the only ones stuck with lousy telcos. I assume there's nobody doing fixed terrestrial wireless in the area? If not...can you? It sounds as though you're physically close enough that if you could get a decent link to them, you could effectively be the ISP.

I've seen links on various types of equipment handle 10mbit synchronous, with really good latency and packet delivery--good enough for a 384 kbit/sec video call, for example. I think I read somewhere that some of the gear is good for up to 30km (um...18 miles?), though I'm not sure what the quality/distance graph looks like.

Based on what the various ISPs are (not) charging for installation, the gear is not that expensive (not relative to what you're dealing with, anyway), and I think the biggest expense I've heard of thus far is a buddy who had to have an antenna tower installed (think OTA TV antenna height) in order to get the signal up over the hill which sits between his house and the ISP's tower (I think they charged him $1k or so). It sounds as though the valley will create a similar problem; any chance of putting in a relay tower at the edge of the valley, in order to get signal down into it?

Nope, Acronis (and I assume others as well--I specify Acronis because it was mentioned, and I use it) disk images can be used to do a bare-metal restore in the event of software or disk failure. You'd need either (a) previously-created rescue media, or (b) another machine with Acronis and (i) a spare SATA/IDE port or (ii) a USB disk enclosure. Works like a charm. In fact, IIRC, the replacement disk doesn't even need to be of the same size, except under certain circumstances.

Ah, so they're like...every government in our history? Every government heads into an election hoping for a majority (though some are more delusional regarding their odds than others). The grandparent complains that:

but in fact this is what happens prior to every single election, and what will continue to happen for the foreseeable future. The grandparent is also points out that the election was held 'early', however given that the current Prime Minister introduced the law which demands fixed election dates, and included in it a provision in which the PM can call an election at will, the law differs rather significantly from the American system. There's also a provision whereby a minority government (as is the case with the three most recent governments) can be toppled by the opposition parties.

In other words, the law is silly.