‘Many’ in the North to get 50 Mbps+ speeds: Bains

OTTAWA — As part of its strategy to tackle rural broadband in Canada, the Liberal government today announced its first spending commitment to a project that will use low earth orbit satellites to connect Canada’s most remote areas -- an approach to rural broadband that has yet to be successfully deployed. At a press conference convened at Canada Aviation and Space Museum, and while standing next to a model of one of the earliest Canadian satellites, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains announced that the department would be investing $85 million into the Ottawa-based satellite company Telesat Holdings Inc. through the ministry’s Strategic Innovation Fund. The government previously indicated it would be directing funding for LEOs through the fund in the 2018 budget, but Wednesday’s announcement was the first commitment to a specific company. Telesat’s LEO satellites, as they are known, should be serving the far north by 2022, according to the ministry’s memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the company, and providing service to “all of Canada” from its constellation by mid-2023. According to the MOU, which is not a legally binding document, the objective of the project is to make available internet speeds consistent with the CRTC’s basic service standard of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speed. Currently, not a single community in Canada’s North has service that meets that standard. “I am very confident, speaking to and others, and the investments that we’ve made, that’s the bare, bare minimum. I am confident that we will exceed that in many communities,” Bains said. The MOU doesn’t specify whether the LEO service is expected to meet other benchmarks set by the CRTC’s basic service standards, such as latency or the option to sign up for unlimited data. The company will monitor and report performance levels of its internet service once it is up and running, according to an emailed statement from Telesat’s vice president for LEO Erwin Hudson. “The Telesat LEO system will have network management tools that monitor network performance and ensure that the satellite service meets its requirements and that adequate bandwidth is always available, allowing ISPs to deliver services that meet or exceed the CRTC minimum data rates,” Hudson wrote in an email to The Wire Report. Responding to questions about whether or not the satellites would be built in Canada, Bains said that the ministry was “engaging with” Telesat to that end. “We’d love to build them in Canada, this is part of the ongoing conversations we’re having with Telesat,” he said. In contrast to traditional geostationary satellites, low-earth orbit systems use constellations of many satellites that are placed lower in orbit, where they are constantly circling the globe. Telesat is one of a number of companies worldwide working toward launching low earth orbit satellites, including big names like Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and, most recently, Amazon.com Inc. with its Kuiper Systems project. None of those projects have yet begun providing service. Asked if there was any foreseeable risk in investing in investing such an emergent technology, ISED spokesperson Dani Keenan pointed to the company’s track record. “As with any fund and any investment, there are of course risks. But this is a priority and because Telesat has such a reputation on this we’re confident in this show of support,” she said in a phone interview. Telesat’s Hudson pointed to an analysis conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which reported that Telesat’s design was “far more efficient compared to those of OneWeb and SpaceX.” “Keep in mind that Telesat has a 50-year record of success in space-based communications,” Hudson wrote, adding that the company was currently performing what he called Phase 1 live testing of a LEO satellite currently in orbit. The announcement of the investment in Telesat came 48 hours after Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. launched its own efforts toward Internet connectivity in the far north, announcing Monday that it would be selling radio access network technology to Iristel Inc.’s Ice Wireless, with a goal of connecting some 70 communities across Nunavut and northern Quebec. “From our perspective, the more competition, the more investments we see, we’re looking forward to that, but the government has made no official arrangement or commitment with Huawei,” Bains said of the Chinese company’s Monday announcement. The announcement of the investment in LEO research and development comes as the government has been the target of some criticism on its rural connectivity roll out. The CRTC announced last month that it would be focusing its broadband fund on the North, with chairman Ian Scott saying the regulator chose to do so because that’s the area with the most need for improvement when it comes to internet service. — With reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

‘Many’ in the North to get 50 Mbps+ speeds: Bains

News | July 24, 2019

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‘Many’ in the North to get 50 Mbps+ speeds: Bains

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