A $2.14-billion federal loan for an Ottawa-based satellite operator has Canadian politicians arguing about whether American billionaire Elon Musk poses a national security risk.
The fight involves internet connectivity in remote regions as Canada tries to live up to its promise to connect every Canadian household to high-speed internet by 2030.
A week ago, the Liberal government announced the loan to Telesat, which is launching a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites that will be able to connect the most remote areas of the country to broadband internet.
Conservative MP Michael Barrett objected to the price tag, asking Musk in a social media post how much it would cost to provide his Starlink to every Canadian household that does not have high-speed access.
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”?
Yes. As long as their Canadian. We are just a siphon for Americans to get cash from.
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
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.
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.
Probably other options but yah Starlink was still probably the best.
There were almost literally no other options. Cable ended service one mile away. Third-party cellular stations were blocked by terrain and would require a 30’ mast (quotes were about $2k for the mast install), Bell wasn’t offering cellular service at the time (and I don’t know if they do now), geo satellite has the worst latency you can get, and caps that make it almost worthless. The only options with less than $1k upfront costs and sub-second latencies were DSL and Starlink. Trust me, I wouldn’t have sat on the Starlink waiting list for 9 months if there was a better option.
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.
This is exactly what we want. Fuck the conservatives and Musk.