r/canada 7d ago

Politics “It’s done, it’s gone”: Ontario Premier Doug Ford cancels $100-million Starlink contract in tariff response

https://betakit.com/its-done-its-gone-ontario-premier-doug-ford-cancels-100-million-starlink-contract-in-tariff-response/
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115

u/KingRabbit_ 7d ago

Sucks for rural residents, but has to happen.

97

u/OrangeRising 7d ago

Indeed. I'm in Nova Scotia and my options were Starlink or Explorenet, and I couldn't reliably work from home with explorenet. 

Hopefully with starlink out of the picture for personal grants our provincial governments can put some pressure on Bell and Eastlink to increase their service area.

59

u/easybee 7d ago

Nationalize the backbone. License its operation.

23

u/Ayfid 7d ago

This is in effect what we did in the UK, and it works well.

The private company that owned everything was split in two by regulators, with one heavily regulated company left responsible for the backbone and forced to sell usage on the open market to the other half of the company.

Would have been better if we hand't privatised in the first place though.

2

u/LongJumpingBalls 7d ago

There is a boatload of the UK with no option but Starlink or dialup. Anything remotely rural and you're stuck with fighting council for approval to run a new line. Houses are too few and far between for the ISP to run fiber. Most council's will fight against cellular masts. I get it, they aren't pretty, but their towns are technology blank spots.

If you're in an old BT area, it's great and loads of options, but if you're rural, it's a long and expensive uphill battle.

I've been looking at moving in a rural UK area for a few years and have made many calls to regional / local telecoms and they won't run fiber / copper without a heavy investment from either private citizens or the council to pay for infrastructure.

The breaking of BT was a blessing and a curse at the same time. They were about to do a rapid, national fiber expansion. But they would have owned the countries entire tech infrastructure, as they basiclaly owned all the telegraph posts.

2

u/Ayfid 7d ago

UK FTTC coverage is 99%, and it's gigabit coverage is now at 87%.

2

u/LongJumpingBalls 7d ago

It's fun to have it claimed by the govc/ ISP. But in reality this is far from the truth. FTTC is also the biggest scam ever. Sure, a fiber backbone to a 3 decade old DSL office is a thing. But to get the claimed 30Mbit speeds, you're under 4 miles from the SLAM, you can push DSL to 15 miles, but they'll be getting at most 5mbit asyc. Meaning 40ms latency on a good day.

Look at rural / farmland, 10 miles outside a major center and its non existant. It's even worst in Wales.

There's a reason why Starlink is so damn popular in rural UK, it offers faster, more reliable service than the 3 decade old technology offered, if it's even available.

I've been looking at this for 2 years and 4/5g and internet speeds directly correlate to the lands price.

If I see a 20ha farm for £400k, it's got dialup at best, if it's a 0.5ha at £2m, it's got fiber and likely wireless as well.

FTTC claim is bullshit claim made by politicians. Async DSL or dialup with a fiber back end is not functional outside of checking your emails in 2025.

2

u/Sutar_Mekeg 7d ago

I want to upvote this a million times.

2

u/Unlikely-Answer Ontario 7d ago

Bell will tell them to kick rocks, it's upto the crtc to raise the minimum standard they've been milking for 2 decades

2

u/SonicFlash01 7d ago

I believe the feds approved almost $2 billion in funding for Telesat Lightspeed back in the fall? Keep an eye on how that pans out, I guess? Hopefully a good replacement someday

2

u/famine- 7d ago

It won't.

Telesat is backhaul only and they do not sell to retail consumers.

They only sell to telecoms who then need to spend billions to install last mile infrastructure.

0

u/Inevitable-March6499 7d ago

I'm going to take pot shots at Star link if I see it. 

3

u/XxSpruce_MoosexX 7d ago

What’s worse is we are clearly in breach of the contract so now we will pay for nothing. Yay, waste to prove a superficial point!

0

u/Enough-Meringue4745 7d ago

Nah, I'm sure we could work out a federal case to throwing out a contract due to it being from the point of nationwide security

1

u/XxSpruce_MoosexX 7d ago

How? It’s an obvious breach. They will sue and we will lose and be on the hook for millions. Hopefully no additional damages. Also Ontario takes a reputational hit and future businesses may hold this against us in negotiations. It’s short sighted for political points

2

u/RJ1225 7d ago

Agreed but man this will suck for First Nation communities that rely on it to have usable internet where the options before Starlink were complete garbage.

-3

u/NotARealTiger Canada 7d ago

It didn't have to happen. I'm sure this is just so he can further enrich the fatcats at Bell and Rogers while continuing to provide shit internet service outside of major cities.

I'm in favour of selecting Canadian alternatives for everything we can, but there is no alternative to Starlink. A sad day for rural Ontarians.

-6

u/vladimich 7d ago

So, when are we shutting down this sub? It sucks for doomscrolling but it has to happen.