New satellites to improve Internet access in North, companies say

As-yet-unlaunched satellites will make more Internet capacity available at a lower cost in rural and remote areas, satellite providers told the CRTC Wednesday, on the third day of its three-week hearing into what basic telecom services should be available to all Canadians. Telesat Holdings Inc., which sells satellite services to telecommunications companies, said that high-throughput satellite (HTS) technology “increases capacity by an order of magnitude, while leading to lower prices. For example, the current generation of HTS have more than 30 times the capacity of conventional C/Ku-band satellites.” Ian Scott, Telesat’s executive director of regulatory and government affairs, told the panel that “in the near term, this number will grow to 100 times the capacity, and future planned and announced HTS will have approximately 400 times more throughput than conventional satellites.” Scott said Telesat plans to add more capacity in the North through a new high-throughput satellite as well as two low-earth-orbit satellites. The fact that satellite costs are higher in the North is part of a broader issue, he said. “The cost to power ground stations and local distribution networks are exponentially higher in the North, as are the costs of building materials and labour. Put simply, everything costs more in the North,” he said. “Satellite, however, remains the most efficient and effective vehicle to deliver broadband and other telecommunications services to remote areas. Moreover, the combination of new technologies, intense competition, and growth in the deployment of satellite services will help reduce the cost of serving the North and other remote communities,” Scott argued. In response to questions from the CRTC panel, Scott said satellite remains superior to building fibre networks into remote locations. “From our perspective the proper analysis isn’t to assume that fibre is a superior solution. Fibre has large upfront capital costs. It has ongoing costs, which are sometimes overlooked. But at the end of the day you can take that capacity, look what it would cost to build and figure out what your price per bit would be,” he said. “What satellite offers with HTS capacity is its ability to be a competitive, in fact superior, alternative in places like communities in Nunavut where I believe satellite is the best possible type of technical solution and it will be the lowest cost per bit.” He added that low-orbit satellites provide an opportunity to develop a service that would provide lower latency as well as global coverage. Scott added it “could be a viable solution to a number of perplexing, challenging problems” and that, “in combination with geo-stationary satellites,” Telesat thinks it would “effectively resolve” all the issues the panel is attempting to address. During its appearance earlier in the day, satellite provider Xplornet Communications Inc. also told the panel that the company plans to make available “to rural Canadians speed packages of up to 25 Mbps with data of 250 GB per month, at affordable prices,” and aims to be able to deliver speeds of 100 Mbps per second to rural areas by 2020. CEO Allison Lenehan said the company began offering fixed wireless service last year, and will launch two new high-throughput satellites over the next year. He asked the CRTC not to duplicate efforts private companies have made by setting up a subsidy program. “Since 2014, 283 facilities-based providers, including Xplornet, have spent hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars expanding coverage and have likely addressed most, if not all, of the 180,000 households without 5 Mbps service,” CEO Allison Lenehan told the panel. “If that is insufficient, the commitment by the current government to spend half a billion dollars over the next five years in support of rural broadband will certainly reach them. We urge the commission not to duplicate these efforts. We believe a new CRTC subsidy program would curtail private investment, discourage innovation and dampen competition.” Lenehan told the CRTC it should make its previous speed target of 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload the new basic service level, because it’s sufficient for activities like email, electronic banking and the ability to access government services, and suggested the commission set an “aspirational goal” of reaching new speed targets of 25 Mbps by 2020. The biggest barrier to improving service in Canada is lack of access to spectrum, Lenehan argued. He also suggested digital education can help bring online those Canadians who don’t use the Internet because they don’t see it as relevant, and income-based subsidies can help those who can’t afford to connect. CRTC commissioner Candace Molnar said following the company’s presentation that “it becomes a bit confusing to say, well, there’s a satellite provider who’s offering and promising to offer greater and greater speeds at commercial rates without any government investment, and we have full communities coming forward saying they needs hundreds of millions of investment, and they’re scraping by with .” “That’s two very different stories,” she said, in reference to appearances during the first two days of the hearing by northern governments and community groups who outlined problems with Internet service. “Investment in infrastructure, as you guys know, is one of the most important parts of this conversation, and we need to continue to figure out a way to keep working together… government entities of all levels with private capital to make sure we’re deploying the capital efficiently,” Xplornet representatives responded. “What we tend to find is that with the amount of money that’s going into Connecting Canadians in recent years, it’s simply not the best idea for us to then spend more in that same area with the same private capital, to solve apparently the same problem, if we have other areas of the country that have a similar need.” — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and Shruti Shekar at sshekar@thewirereport.ca and editing by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca

New satellites to improve Internet access in North, companies say

News | 04/13/2016 9:21 pm EDT

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