The Alberta government and the federal government have teamed up to bring high-speed internet service to rural areas at a cost 5,300% higher than it would be if people just got the service themselves. It s nuts, and the program should be scrapped.
00:00:00.000To the Alberta government and the federal government, they've actually teamed up on something.
00:00:03.340And they're going to provide internet service to rural areas at a cost 5,300% higher than it would be if people just got the service themselves.
00:00:21.280And like the early days of telephone services, rural areas, they take longer to get the infrastructure.
00:00:26.120You know, there used to be party lines until surprisingly not too long ago.
00:00:28.920So living in rural areas is a choice, and residents in them understand you won't necessarily have access to as many services or as quickly as urban dwellers do, or at least they should understand that.
00:00:38.960Now, I live near a pretty massive urban center, but I'm on a rural property.
00:00:42.860And our quest for decent internet access has been long and painful.
00:00:46.320Well, cities have had cable and fiber optic internet options for decades now.
00:00:50.740Lots of rural areas have had terrible provision, if any, options at all.
00:00:54.360At my place, we had to set up a small tower on the roof to receive this wireless signal, which provided unstable, slow internet service at a high cost and terrible customer service.
00:01:04.580We then switched to using a hub to get service through our cellular provider.
00:01:08.060That was expensive and pointless, as the local cell tower couldn't keep up with demand, and the speeds were nearly as bad as dial-up if they weren't totally crashed.
00:01:15.600Now, despite being only 800 meters from a fiber optic cable on a nearby highway, we can't get fiber optic services because it's too expensive for any provider to install a stub line down in my community.
00:01:25.920Fiber optic cable is difficult and expensive to put down.
00:01:28.740It's not like copper power wires or telephone lines.
00:01:30.880Finally, though, we heard about this new option a few years ago.
00:01:34.700Starlink was offering high-speed service.
00:01:36.680It was going to cost $700 for the hardware, and we'd have to go on a waiting list.
00:01:56.740There's no need for a professional installation or tedious aiming of the dish like with your satellite TV services and other internet options.
00:02:03.520And best of all, we immediately had high-speed internet service.
00:02:06.760And that speed and reliability has only gotten better since we put it up there, even though most of our neighbors now have Starlink as well.
00:02:22.300Now, let's look at what the provincial and federal governments have been up to in the issue.
00:02:24.840Well, governments at every level have been promising to bring high-speed internet to rural areas for over a decade.
00:02:29.940It's a popular promise to make, but apparently a difficult one to keep.
00:02:32.920Until Starlink came, all that most rural dwellers saw were promises and spending announcements.
00:02:38.900Most didn't even see that because our internet was too crappy to surf the news and find out.
00:02:42.500The promised spending has been significant, though.
00:02:44.820The Alberta government partnered with the federal government to spend $780 million on what they're calling the Alberta Broadband Fund.
00:02:51.060In bits and pieces, they figured they're going to bring high-speed internet service to the entire rural Alberta population by 2030 or so.
00:02:57.480Yeah, right up, you know, when we all go to electric cars.
00:02:59.960Then they break that fund up to make grand announcements.
00:03:02.860Like the one last June trumpeting, they're going to bring high-speed internet to 1,440 rural Alberta homes for the low price of $10,625 per household.
00:03:13.680Only the government could manage to take a service that costs $200 per household and manage to soak taxpayers for $10,625.
00:03:21.540The announcement didn't provide a timeline either, so we can assume it would probably be a few years before those 1,400 or 14,000 homes see this new service.
00:03:29.700In the meantime, the $200 Starlink option usually arrives within a couple of weeks of ordering it.
00:03:35.260It's available in every part of the province.
00:03:36.600Now, on top of that last announcement, the government still has $620 million laying around dedicated to this project of high-speed internet.
00:03:43.040The Starlink dishes are appearing on rooftops like daisies already.
00:03:46.460Rural citizens aren't waiting for the government to provide something in years that they can get now in weeks.
00:03:50.940The government's definition of high speed, by the way, is 50 megabytes per second.
00:03:54.460Starlink's already at over 100 megabytes per second.
00:04:00.040Some people are claiming we shouldn't become dependent on a service provided by a billionaire like Elon Musk.
00:04:03.920Well, I hate to break it to you guys, but the government isn't providing local mom-and-pop internet providers.
00:04:09.140You're going to be just dependent on a different bunch of billionaires.
00:04:11.760With the Rogers internet crash and periodic internet service losses due to fiber optic strikes, let's not pretend that non-Starlink options are any more reliable.
00:04:20.040Governments like to pretend they've operated top efficiency and there's no room for cuts anywhere.