Can anyone explain to me why Canada has such poor internet service? I kind of understand why countries like Australia and New Zealand don't have great internet plans, but Canada is right next to the US and yet has far worse service.
Canada is far less dense than even the United States and internet access is controlled by a duopoly, which is a bad combination for competition or affordable access.
Also the regulatory body (CRTC) thats is supposed to be watching over these companies is run entirely by ex-staff of said companies. So it's very similar to the big banks in the US (their negative actions don't have market repercussions because of their ability to dominate the market with the help of regulatory bodies).
People like to point to population density but I find the answer a little too easy - about 80% of Canada's population lives within 100 miles of the US boarder and a similar proportion live in one of 3 dense urban areas (Quebec City - Windsor corridor, Calgary - Edmonton corridor or BC's Lower Mainland.) Moreover, network infrastructure was heavily subsidized by the government and service to rural areas remains heavily subsidized to this day.
All that to say, there really is no excuse for how badly we lag behind except for the de facto duopoly.
Most of Canada lives in a few large metro areas, so density is not a factor (unless those metro areas are getting fantastic Internet service, which other posts in this thread suggest isn't the case).
The governing body (CRTC) is corrupt. It's obvious to everyone, and I'm basing my vote on whether something is done to clean up that organization or not.
I don't think we have far worse service than the US. North America lags parts of Europe and Asia by a wide margin, but I fail to see how the US is ahead of Canada.
Rural areas here are often underserved and it's no secret we are probably as bad as the US on that front. But worse? I doubt it.
My family in Barnwell, Alberta (pop. 600) has at least DSL these days, and possibly even cable, delivering streaming video and all that without any trouble. There are more remote locations so maybe it's not representative but it's the only info I have personally verified on that.
I live in BC and use Shaw's network to transfer at least 100 gigs per month, every month, at about 15mbps down and about 0.5 to 2 mbps up (like everyone else in North America). This costs $40/mo or something like that. I've done this for over 7 years and have received exactly 1 email from Shaw to inform me that I'm exceeding my limit. The email politely asked that I not do so and I ignored it without hearing anything further.
When mobile I use my phone as a 3G modem tethering my notebook and/or iPad to it using BlueTooth or WiFi. I have 6 GB of transfer each month and regularly use 2 to 6 GB each month. Speeds are pretty good at around 2 to 3 mbps down and something typically abysmal up. I pay $20/mo for the data service.
I have a choice in service on both fronts. Not enough choice for my liking, but a choice nonetheless.
So how is Canada worse than the US? I think we need to establish that the situation is indeed poorer here than in the US before we ask why.
I've lived in Toronto, Ottawa, London, Waterloo, and Vancouver - and let me say Shaw's service is not the norm for the rest of Canada.
I live in the US now and I can say confidently that US home broadband is well ahead of most of Canada (particularly, Ontario), where the data caps are onerous, throttling and packet shaping extreme, prices sky-high, and your throughput is not anywhere near advertised. Ontario is a complete internet backwater by any measure.
I moved from the UK to the Toronto area and I have to say that Canada is the fall pile from a crap-chute.
I'm currently with Cogeco cable and they're mostly accurate with their throughput even close to peak times, however the price is high and the bandwidth amount is appallingly low.
I'm actually lucky that being tech-knowledgeable I've been able to deal with their workers well (it helps one of my friends works there, but didn't help when I moved into my apartment as he couldn't do the install) so they'll max-out my up and down (my mother-in-law has 3mbps upload when she should have ~500K thanks to me talking to the guy).
I think for the same reasons as the US. Entrenched, equally-terrible service providers who co-conspire in their shitness. It's just magnified because Canada is so vast.
This is not quite as bad as what Mediacom, a large US cable ISP is doing on their network. They are modifying TCP in transit to change 404 responses from websites into a 200 response with a line of javascript to redirect the browser to their own search engine. They've been receiving non-stop complaints for 2 months and there's still no way to opt-out.
A month ago they were caught injecting ad's on top of google.com and apple.com, as well as replacing AdSense on arbitrary websites with their own advertising.
It wasn't always bad but it is getting worse, back in 1994 I had at least four, if not more, ISP companies to choose from in my small little corner of Canada.
Now that been whittled down to two, there are others but it involves cellular sticks and some long-range wifi involving grain silos.
My local ISP offers 5, 10, 15, 30 and 100Mbps service but the 30 and 100Mbps are capped at 250GB, I have 15Mbps/1Mbps without a cap since I have had it before caps were implemented.
So choice of an ISP is less, speeds are up but caps have appeared.
The service of our internet is fine for the most part. If I remember correctly, we even attained higher speeds than the US when using Netflix. The problem stems from pricing, support and ridiculous rules - like insane caps and overage fees.
