Internet update - March 2008

There has been some further progress on the universal broadband promised by Nova Scotia Premier, Rodney MacDonald since I originally wrote about rural broadband and TV. Rather than re-write the article I thought I would post updates periodically.

The provision of broadband services to areas where there is no existing cable or phone line high speed (DSL) was recently opened to tender. In our area, the local cable firm Eastlink were awarded the contract.

Eastlink have provided a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page and a contact form on their website.

The technology they appear to be employing is Motorola Canopy - a fixed wireless solution.

There appear to be a number of "flavours" of the Canopy system which operate on different frequency. Looking at the information on the systems, my hope (and surely the logical choice for rural Nova Scotia) is the 900 mhz  flavour for its "ability to penetrate through trees". If you need a line of sight to a tower there will be a lot of households in Nova Scotia who will miss out of this universal coverage.

As we actually have cable running past our house, my hope is still for a wired connection, boosted somewhat by the acquisition of Rush our local cable TV company by Eastlink. However when I spoke to recently visiting salesman, he thought that high speed internet may through the current infrastructure was about 1 or 2 years away.

In the meantime we are sticking with our weather affected, fairly slow (512k in theory), expensive satellite connection and keep checking on the websites to find a tree friendly solution.

Go to Internet update - August 2008