Very interesting to see this agreement happen! I'm sure a lot of rural Canadians would appreciate being able to send text messages from remote areas in emergency situations, etc.
Especially for hikers/campers who go up there for weeks at a time - would help with those situations where you want to stay camping for one more week but you can't as you've told your loved ones you'd be back by a certain date/time. Instead, a quick text to say you're okay and you plan to stay a while longer would be a nice convenience.
Unfortunate that Canada seems to be allowing the mergers of massive telecom companies without any concerns of monopolization, price fixing, etc. etc, though that's a bit of a tangent.
The previous option (a $1500 Iridium 9555 and a $100/mo plan with a 2-year minimum term for 100 minutes/mo+a little data) was expensive so it's good to see more economical options for people. No argument on the oligopoly.
Yeah I was gonna say, an InReach Mini 2 is only $399 and $14.95/mo for the lowest plan. Gives you 10 text messages/month (but you have the ability to send more for, I think, $0.10/text). Folk might scoff at the price, but for any "hikers/campers who go up there for weeks at a time" this is quite likely already a tool that they have that provides additional capabilities mobile phones may not (eg, streamlined SOS services).
> Unfortunate that Canada seems to be allowing the mergers of massive telecom companies without any concerns of monopolization, price fixing, etc. etc, though that's a bit of a tangent.
Shaw isn't really a telecom in the traditional sense, they don't really have any mobile phone subscriber base. That being said, we've always had monopolization, and price fixing for those things in Canada.
Well they had Freedom Mobile, which got divested to Quebecor as part of the Rogers merger, and Shaw Mobile, which was rebranded-Freedom bundled with their landline offerings. (Which will be migrated to Rogers.)
(Shaw also spend some years attempting to build mobile infrastructure before buying Wind.)
Without knowing all the details, I'd call this a major loss for Canadian consumers, and exactly the kind of crap we have to put up with in Canada. Instead of getting to buy a new, innovative product, we'll be forced to get the expensive shitty version though our telecom oligopoly that has the government in their pocket. I'm really pissed off Elon Musk would have collaborated with one of the worlds most consumer unfriendly companies in this way, and not tried to help Canadians avoid getting screwed. (Fixed typo)
Edit: per another comment, this appears more benign than I though at first reading, though anything involving Roger's is a loss for Canadians https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35719151
I agree it's not his problem, but he's generally been supportive of Canada and what we have to put up with so it's shitty to see him get into business with the poster child for what's wrong with the Canadaian business and consumer environment. Maybe it would be better to say I'm disappointed.
What do you mean? I don't understand what "[sic] knew, innovative product" you wanted or expected. I also don't understand what you wanted Musk to do to "help Canadians avoid getting screwed".
This sounds like the same deal SpaceX and T-Mobile have in the US, where Starlink satellites will be providing direct cell coverage to phones for basic SMS and voice call capability in remote areas.
This is separate from the Starlink home internet service which uses a dedicated phased array antenna for broadband speeds.
As long as they don't stop offering Starlink direct to home owners and RV users as a result of this. Unfortunately, given how aggressive and monopolistic Rogers is I could see this being an outcome. I'm sure Rogers has at least pushed for it.
For non-Canadians, Rogers is the largest but also the absolute worst mobile/internet/tv provider in Canada. They routinely use grey area tactics to both bully competitors, and even bully customers.
For example, long in the past I rented an apartment in a large rental building. The building had a no solicitors rule. However, Rogers would routinely come into the building knocking on doors, somehow they got an exception with management who supplied them with a list of all non-rogers customers.
Where it got really obnoxious is that every month they would also have someone come and shove papers under your door that had a big "notice from management" on it. Photocopied like, looking for all the world like you were in trouble. Open up the paper, Rogers ad.
This is really pretty minor as far as this company goes.
I think Starlink is going around making deals with mobile providers in different countries. T-Mobile is the one for US, Rogers is for Canada, and I remember seeing one recently for Australia.
They are on the front foot and going for it before the service is really ready for prime time. 3gpp has working groups that is working on defining standards for direct to device satcom/5G NTN (non-terrestrial network). Chip makers are implementing it in their silicone etc. The rest of the industry is a bit on the back foot. It has not been a very competitive market the last decade, but it's burning under the other players foot now and they need to consolidate and turn them selves around before SpaceX eats all of their lunch. D2D could be a valuable revenue stream, but not if SpaceX gets there first. Interesting times.
Just for context on how bad Canadian consumers are getting screwed: when I moved here it was cheaper to pay the roaming fees for my US phone in Canada than it was to switch to a Canadian telecom.
There are quite a few Canadians who live close enough to, or travel across the border often enough that their personal phone/number is from a US carrier, usually the closest town or city to their own. Depending on how often or how you use your phone, it can be half the price of having a plan with a domestic carrier. As far as I'm aware, most of the US carriers only require that the device registers on their home network at least once every six months, and bills to a US address, meaning even just a semi-annual shopping trip to somewhere like Port Huron (where you can also purchase a PO box and therefore have a US billing address) can save you hundreds every year.
To add some more context, their excuse for high prices and mediocre service is generally something to do with the size of the country, which granted they aren't exactly wrong, until you realize that roughly 90% of the entire Canadian population lives within 160km (100 miles) of a US border. Canadian telecoms are a legal cartel, for all intents and purposes.
> To add some more context, their excuse for high prices and mediocre service is generally something to do with the size of the country, which granted they aren't exactly wrong,…
Not a problem in other sparsely populated, geographically large countries, like Australia.
Not really. Candians pack more tightly together. There is far more land per person, but 90% of the canadian population, those in cities, live in a smaller area than the 90% us average. Canada is mostly dense cities separated by empty. By comparison, America is one rolling suburb from coast to coast.
Take british columbia, a vastly big place by US standards. Drop one 50-mile circle on vancouver and you have 75% of BC's population covered in one service area. If you draw a line from the ski hills north of vancouver, to alaska, you will cross only two roads. Everything to the north is empty by us standards.
My original comment was correct for mean density, but US clumps too.
In addition, Cell phone networks need to cover the area people travel, so unless Canadians only travel in an area 11% that of those in the US, the point stands.
In all honesty, 11% sounds high for land area covered by cell service.
There are large sections of the trans-canada highway that aren't covered (the only east west highway, and the main road across the country). I can't really count on having cell service on the highways between towns when I'm travelling in Canada so they aren't really providing much coverage there.
Just to drive the point home here's a map of Rogers coverage. They don't have a single tower in the three provinces that make up the northern half of the country. Canada, despite being large is really a VERY centralized country. 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border.
Exactly. And about 18 million people, half of Canada's entire population, live in the Quebec City - Windsor corridor, the narrow and densely populated strip which includes the cities of Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal.
Australia has the worst rural service I've come across in my travels so I wouldn't hold them up as a good example. There are medium sized rural towns with service only from one or maybe two telcos and even then the capacity is often rather limited (one town for instance only had a single 15 MHz LTE channel from an omnidirectional antenna serving the entire town and surrounding region). In New Zealand we pay more than the Australians do but we have service from all carriers to even small towns. In New Zealand towns the same size as the Australian town I mentioned would have a cell site (or even two or three!) from each of our three networks with multiple LTE channels providing LTE carrier aggregation of up up to 50—100 MHz and directional panel antennas. The difference in QOS especially at times of high demand is night and day. In more recent times smaller towns have all three networks cooperating to provide service from the same tower (as part of a joint venture between all three networks called Rural Connectivity Group) making it economical to service small towns with no difference in QOS between networks.I'd rather have the latter than the former IMHO.
Upgrading to just sectors would net them so much more range! Sprint and T-Mobile here in the USA used to do egregious stuff like this, or only put up 1 sector of 3 on a tower just to mostly cover a freeway or highway, ignoring the rural userbase entirely.
> when I moved here it was cheaper to pay the roaming fees for my US phone in Canada than it was to switch to a Canadian telecom.
Was it data quantity that made that feasible? My Canadian plan is $45/month and has unlimited phone time and 6 gigs of data (which is great for my usage) and is on one of the big three carriers so coverage is great. Freedom mobile offers 20gb for $50, but their coverage is weaker (i.e. you're roaming outside of major cities). These convert to $33/$36 in USD. Both of these options look significantly cheaper than any plans I quickly see on the big US carriers, before even accounting for the roaming charges (albeit with more limited data)
If you go back to when T-mobile was incredibly competitive, plans were often $20-30. If I want a month, I can get a SIM prepaid for $30 or less with all the data in the US, and sometimes as little as $3 in Europe.
Plus there was a time, albeit almost a decade ago now when the dollar was on par. Even about a year ago the dollar was still aiming for 0.8 rather than the 0.74 it’s flirting with right now.
Lastly, if you want an Apple Watch with cellular, you end up needing a more expensive plan from the big three rather than their sub-brands. And the Canadian government is threatening regulation to encourage carriers to offer more data for less. There was a time within the decade when $60 at Fido would get you 2GB and that was during a “double data” promo. This was 2018. https://forums.redflagdeals.com/fido-60-unlimited-canada-wid...
The landscape has changed since I came in 2018 (after some parliamentary rumblings, the big telcos rolled out "unlimited plans"), but for context, a 5gb plan was considered a large data plan, and generally was in the $80+ range when I arrived, starter plans were generally 2gb in the $60 region. Extra data wasn't throttled, it was charged for at a high rate.
The plan I was referring to is an older tmobile plan with 3 lines on it. They come out to just under $50 cad per line including taxes/fees and that includes 5gb of Canadian/Mexican LTE/5g, unlimited 3g after that, as well as unlimited everything in the US, and no extra charge to call anywhere in NA.
I can roam on Bell, Telus or Rogers, so tend to get better coverage than my Canadian friends. I also get unlimited worldwide texting and 2g data when I travel for no additional charge.
If I switched to one of the new t-mobile plans, I would be paying $59/line, but that includes a free Netflix subscription, and 10gb of Canadian data.
I just priced out a roughly comparable rogers plan for the features I actually use (5gb, unlimited US calls, data in the US) and it comes to $65 CAD + $12 per day I'm in the US, or go for the unlimited US plan which is $105 CAD on a promotional offer right now. Add on another 12% for tax and a bunch of fees I'm sure I'd learn about after the fact, and keeping my US service is very competitive. Rogers new plans, are pretty new (I believe unlimited data only started in 2019 or 2020, and their definition of unlimited is 20gb).
The takeaway for me is that if I was just a single line, and I didn't leave Canada much, I would probably pay slightly less. Since I call and text the US daily, and travel there for at least a month a year, I save several hundred dollars a year on tmobile, and don't have to worry about getting billed hundreds or thousands because I forgot to buy a data pass for a trip across the border.
During the NAFTA 2.0 negotiations, Trudeau allow Rogers and Bell to claim they are Canadian Media companies and not telcos giving them protection against American telcos and made sure that Canadians will never enjoy the same rates US Consumers enjoy by offering this protection. It's the same for many Canadian industries that can operate without any competition from the US.
I don't think anyone in the US can even fathom the prices Canadians are charged for the service they get. My $80 Googlefi plan (4 lines) would cost around $500 plus a month in Canada.
When I travelled to Canada for a week for work, it was cheaper to get a random American roaming card off Amazon with a week worth of roaming data than it was to get any local prepaid SIM. It's crazy.
Not sure this is an issue, I'm Canadian. This seems like Rogers customers will have access to reception via SpaceX satellites in remote areas, which is a good thing. If anything, this means a) Rogers has a slightly richer offering than the 2? other cell providers in Canada, b) Rogers is paying SpaceX for this OR Rogers is agreeing to play nice and in fact SpaceX is eating the bill.
It is likely that Rogers agrees to pay Starlink a fee when Starlink acts as a roaming provider for one of their customers, where Starlink has slow and limited speeds but universal coverage. The industry has similar arrangements with roaming networks when you leave your country; some cell providers don't operate any towers at all. Starlink gets the fees, plus the right to transmit the LTE signals in a spectrum owned by Rogers, similar to the T-Mobile deal in the US, and Rogers gets to market that they have universal coverage.
Not sure about Canadian law, but here a little bit south, door to door salesmen frequently skirt "no solicitation" laws by "merely" providing information to the homeowner, instead of directly trying to get them to sign something on the spot.
Sort of the same law hack as Tesla does with their "showrooms", where you aren't in a dealership - you ultimately just order a car online from California even if you're a few states away.
> For non-Canadians, Rogers is the largest but also the absolute worst mobile/internet/tv provider in Canada. They routinely use grey area tactics to both bully competitors, and even bully customers.
I mean they're expensive, and anti-competitive, but their products and services are very good.
Their products are not good. Bell has had real fibre to the home for a lot longer than Rogers for example. Their tv service is a joke while Bell even offers crave to non bell customers for a reasonable price over the internet.
The there is the nationwide outage that even got the federal government involved. Super ironic as high quality service was part of their justification for extremely high prices. Turns out they didn’t have basic redundancy down. I’ve never seen that kind of failure in any other company that size.
> For non-Canadians, Rogers is the largest but also the absolute worst mobile/internet/tv provider in Canada. They routinely use grey area tactics to both bully competitors, and even bully customers.
To be fair, everyone in the industry is completely awful. It is splitting hairs to say Rogers is the “worst” when they are all so completely terrible and lacking any redeeming characteristics.
The Starlink LTE has a bandwidth of 5 Mbps per cell. It is only usable for text messaging and voice calls. It can't replace Starlink internet service or regular mobile service. It competes with satellite phones and satellite messengers.
5M is still perfectly adequate but it's per cell, not per user. If you were the only person in the cell then you could browse the web just fine. But the cells are huge - 15 mile diameter.
> As long as they don't stop offering Starlink direct to home owners and RV users as a result of this. Unfortunately, given how aggressive and monopolistic Rogers is I could see this being an outcome. I'm sure Rogers has at least pushed for it.
SpaceX/Starlink has a nationwide license/permission from the Canadian federal government for direct to consumer LEO satellite services so it's very unlikely they would remove this as a service option.
Starlink has been revolutionary for people in some very remote part of Canada whose previous ONLY option was consumer grade geostationary Ku/Ka-band VSAT terminals at oversubscriptions ratios of 32:1 or worse. Xplornet, etc. Same tech as viasat/wildblue/hughesnet consumer stuff in USA.
Has anyone used a RockBLOCK? They seemed to be the cheapest way to send SMS via the iridium network. I wonder how long until we see something similar for starlink's network.
The Starlink modems pull about 100 watts. As far as I know, the cell uplink service being discussed in this article does not use the Swarm network, and the phones utilizing this new service will not be running at 100w. This is a new satellite based low-power 4g/5g service that slots in somewhere between Starlink internet and Swarm's offering, and it seems to be integrated into the Starlink network. It is cheap enough to lump into cell plans, is compatible with sub $100 phones, and seems to have the capacity for much higher bandwidths.
I suppose this is Rogers' plan to make their service not miserably terrible in remote areas?
There are other companies such as Telus that have great coverage in rural areas, presumably because they're the ancestor of state owned BC Tel and have access to that great infrastructure.
So Rogers was faced with either having to duplicate the infrastructure that Telus already had, or do some innovative deal like this to bypass having to do that.
It all suggests that this is being done the wrong way, with great waste and cost, that all this infrastructure is a basic utility that should be done once by a state owned monopoly that is available for all to use, and several individual mobile phone companies can use it and pay for its upkeep.
Nitpick: Telus was born out of privatisation of AGT (Alberta Government Telephone). They bought out BCTel some years after they had been operating privately as Telus.
This doesn't really solve a problem anyone had that fixed location Starlink and Rogers' LTE network didn't solve already, and I would rather have bought a non-Rogers account, as the telcos here are oligarchs. Post pandemic, high speed in rural areas has been great for working from home, and bringing some new money into dying towns, but from a conservation perspective, I think the deal is an environmental disaster.
Even though I'm sure it's nice for people to be able to post selfies from national parks, it will also exacerbate a growing tension between rural residents and the increasing number of tourists who mainly loiter in their cars and beside the road, have tailgates on peoples lawns, tresspass, and make a general nuissance of themselves - as distinct from hikers, campers, and trippers who are there to appreciate remote areas instead of merely using them as a platform for their instagram photos.
There's one part of Canada that pays about half of what everyone else pays for cellular service - thats Saskatchewan. Because Saskatchewan has a government-run cell carrier, SaskTel.
Canada just needs a federal crown corporation to offer cell service.
Is this considered a good deal? 100GB data on SaskTel for $140/month? In the UK you can get that for ~£10/month, $17CAD.
And before everyone starts, no, geography doesn't really make a huge difference in cost of providing the service. In remote rural areas you can get away with putting one tower up with LTE800 or another low frequency carrier, which will probably cover 20km in each direction from the cell site. Dense places are much more expensive to serve, requiring cell sites every <1km with a multitude of high and low frequency carriers.
I'm not sure I see a 100GB plan on their website, a link might be useful.
However SaskTel charges $35/month for a 5GB data-only plan while Rogers charges $60. They also have a $90CAD 60GB plan which Rogers would charge checks notes $180 for.
So is it an objectively good deal, no. It is however half the national average.
I don't consider these plans unlimited; after the data allowance of 100GB speeds are shaped to <512kbit/sec which is close to unusable these days (some carriers in the UK offer similar but they consider it 'emergency' data to keep connected for basics, they wouldn't sell it as unlimited).
I think that's fair criticism. It's how this kind of plan is marketed all over North America. At one point Rogers marketed a 10MB plan as Unlimited like 10 years ago haha.
Firstly, the majority of Canada's geography is not covered by cell service given the population lives in such a small percentage of it.
Secondly, you can see how few towers SaskTel has here - https://www.sasktel.com/wps/wcm/connect/content/home/wireles... - click Saskatchewan LTE then show the various towers. Look how many towers are required for more "urban" areas in SK than the rural areas. These are pretty low density by european cities standards as well, where you can have small cells every 100m on busy streets.
The majority of Canada's landmass does not have cell service[1]. That is a fact. That doesn't mean the same as there is no coverage if people don't live there.
I'm a Saskatchewan resident. It's easy to grumble about the phone company, but Sasktel does a great job. We're a huge low-density province, but with the crown corp mandates, small towns in Saskatchewan have excellent cell and fibre service. There's no way a private company invests like that. Saskatchewan gets better and faster service for less money.
We also have a provincial auto insurer, SGI. The prices for car insurance in Alberta or Ontario are ludicrous in comparison. The power and natural gas crowns are decent, as far as I can tell.
It's really sad how other provinces sold off their crown corps to their detriment and even Sask, long a leader in this area, has turned away from these sort of policies in recent years.
Saskatchewan politics don't make a lot of sense to me. I'm not sure how the "let's work together" mentality that gave us the Co-op, the Wheat Pool, and Medicare turned into a "fuck you, I got mine" mentality.
I think it is sadly a result of influence of their lucky and wealthy neighbour Alberta and trying to replicate that success using misguided cargo cult methods.
Alberta of course massively wealthy due to the fortunes springing up out of the ground, and over the years has been able to draw Canadians from all sorts of places at times where their own home province was relatively economically depressed.
Alberta also has a conservative political culture and some unique ideas around how to organize things that were particularly different from, as you said, the "let's work together" approach of Sask under visionary leader Tommy Douglas and those that followed that social democratic road map.
So I think you had a combination of Sask folks going to Alberta to work in the oil sands and picking up the politics and coming back with it, and the centralized conservative media touting Albertan success across the border as a road map for Saskachewan success.
Of course the reality is that Alberta's success likely has a lot a lot less to do with their political policy choices, and a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that they get absolutely ginormous oil royalties that funds their every budget wish.
Saskachewan trying to replicate what Alberta has via the policy side, without the resource royalty side, well they're not going to see the same outcomes.
> Of course the reality is that Alberta's success likely has a lot a lot less to do with their political policy choices, and a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that they get absolutely ginormous oil royalties that funds their every budget wish.
I think this also reflected in their bimodal provincial politics. Unlike other province, there's just two teams, and they're the polar opposites (provincial NDP squarely on the left, UCP on the very-right for folks from outside Canada).
> Canada just needs a federal crown corporation to offer cell service.
Canada Post Corporation exists, yet sending and receiving letters/parcels is expensive, slow, and often inconvenient throughout Canada.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation exists, yet the Canadian news and media landscape is severely lacking in quality (and in my experience, CBC typically has the lowest-quality content).
VIA Rail Canada Inc. exists, yet passenger rail travel is expensive, slow, inconvenient, and quite limited throughout Canada.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation exists, yet housing is incredibly expensive throughout Canada.
Yet another federal Crown corporation isn't the answer.
> Canada Post Corporation exists, yet sending and receiving letters/parcels is expensive, slow, and often inconvenient throughout Canada.
Very inexpensive and accessible, and private alternatives exist. Canada Post actually does a great job all things considered. Do you really think you can get a letter to Nunavut for $1.07 faster by private courier?
Canada Post topped Canada's Most Trusted Brands list in 2020. [2]
> The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation exists, yet the Canadian news and media landscape is severely lacking in quality (and in my experience, CBC typically has the lowest-quality content).
Completely disagree on that one, and entirely opinion.
> VIA Rail Canada Inc. exists, yet passenger rail travel is expensive, slow, inconvenient, and quite limited throughout Canada.
It's actually very inexpensive - you can get from Ottawa to Toronto for like $100 CAD round trip - but yes slower than it could be, because the government chose not to invest in it. However, it has recently, and HFR along the corridor is going to be a material improvement.
As is they are much cheaper than driving, faster than driving, waaaay cheaper than flying and sometimes faster.
That said they made the list of Canada's Most Trusted Brands in the Travel category in 2022 so obviously not everyone agrees. [1]
> Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation exists, yet housing is incredibly expensive throughout Canada.
The job of CMHC is not to make housing affordable. That's the job of municipalities and zoning rules. The job of CMHC is to finance homes which they do a fantastic job of.
This doesn't make any more sense than blaming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the high rent prices in San Francisco.
Really doesn't make sense to judge them on something that isn't their job.
> Yet another federal Crown corporation isn't the answer.
So why does Saskatchewan have cell service that costs half what everyone else is paying? Sounds like it might be.
What I would say is just like SaskTel in Saskatchewan, if you don't want to use it, don't sign up. But for me, I'd be onboard in a heartbeat and you'd love them too as they pushed down the cost of cellular service even if you chose not to. Rogers, Bell and Telus plans are similarly way cheaper in Saskatchewan because they have to actually compete for once.
The alternatives to CBC is like CKNW 980 24/7 news radio that is of the "news entertainment" style of news; the sort purely designed to generate impressions by making you angry. noooo thx.
What? Canada Post is awesome. I vastly prefer to send/receive packages with them vs. UPS or FedEx. Like someone else said, Canada Post has never lost one of my packages, and in fact, they have delivered stuff that was either totally incorrect (mistake on the sender's part) or nearly impossible to read. It's not very expensive either... Oh, and I've been able to redirect my old address for years for a pretty cheap fee. Pretty sweet.
It costs less for someone to send me a parcel from the United States by courier than it would for me to send that same parcel across town by Canada Post. And the former would be faster.
Canada Post is great, but it’s not cheap for anything except sending a letter.
> It costs less for someone to send me a parcel from the United States by courier than it would for me to send that same parcel across town by Canada Post.
If you're looking at shipping by say USPS, then International shipping rates are determined under the United Nations Universal Postal Union. [1]
Until like 2020 it would have cost you far less to send a package from China to the US than from the US to somewhere else in the US.
Comparing the cost of domestic to foreign international shipping prices is not reflective of anything, unfortunately.
I would strongly urge you to look again at the cost of FedEx/UPS/DHL shipments into Canada. If you're looking to send a parcel, by ground, you need to add at least like $25 for brokerage. If you're shipping express, you're paying at least $70 for the package, but at least it includes brokerage.
I think this is probably just not accurate.
I just priced a 5lb FedEx Small Box going from SF to Vancouver (800mi/1287km) and it came in at $180USD/244CAD for the cheapest option.
Shipping the same box by Canada Post from Ottawa to Winnipeg (1000mi-ish) came in at $47CAD for the same service tier. $58 to Vancouver.
Ground came in at $24 which is less than the brokerage charge alone would be going international.
> Canada Post is great, but it’s not cheap for anything except sending a letter.
That's probably because Canada is bigger than the United States in land mass and has the population of California. That makes it, therefore, expensive to ship things.
I love receiving my mail orders with UPS or Purolator....everyone else is painful including Canada Post.
UPS and Purolator have it working....FedEx is garbage, Canada Post sucks for parcels, Local couriers are nice because they are real people who call and attempt to actually deliver the package (who would think.....)
>This doesn't really solve a problem anyone had that fixed location Starlink and Rogers' LTE network didn't solve already
This is for locations with no connectivity, where SpaceX satellites become very low-bandwidth Rogers towers for critical situations. Your examples are not relevant.
The rest of your post is just knee-jerk opposition luddism that doesn't apply at all.
The capability here is for 911 connectivity in areas where signal doesn't reach, and emergency notifications for things like extreme weather events or during power outages.
Not a very informative article. Most of these SpaceX deals are years in the future.
I posted a link to AST's recent first ever demonstration of an actual satellite to cell phone voice call, and it didnt even make it onto the IRC feed. I link here again:
AST is already integrated to Nokia's 5G core and Bell in Canada and AT&T in US have signed up with AST for satellite coverage. Nokia is the supplier for both Bell and AT&T 5g core. Also with 3GPP R17 has support for Non-Terrestrial Networks(NTN)
Lynk.world did it a while ago (connecting to 3/4 G phone direct from satellite). SMS a couple years ago, voice a year ago. The are definitely working the market for base sms/data first. It’s easier to deal with hiccups than it is with voice. I doubt anyone will offer voice at first, just universal data roaming.
All these players are trying to secure deals right now[1]. They sent up more sats this year[2].
One of the New Zealand cell phone companies has done this same deal and are advertising it heavily at the moment (along with SpaceX branding, which may not be the positive they think it is right now)
I was pretty surprised to see that advertising actually, definitely caught me off guard to see Vodafone changing their name to One NZ (for example) and then this news to provide 100% coverage.
Which I suppose would be good for those very rural farmers. Maybe places along the west coast/milford/fiordland would def benefit from it. Guess it's one of those things we wait and see how it gets rolled out. And boaties I guess. Basically anyone who can't connect to fibre, and that fibre rollout is pretty extensive as it stands!
Nobody is going to deploy cell towers in the middle of nowhere. If you want to use Starlink Business for tower backhaul I'm sure they would be happy to sell it to you.
IIRC they have an agreement with Google where they can have Google datacenters (and the high speed connectivity that comes with) as downlinks for Starlink in exchange for having a more direct path for Google cloud customers to Google's network.
They also have a spectrum sharing agreement with T-Mobile (which is how they're planning on offering this satellite-to-phone service in the US), maybe that'll expand to Starlink providing backhaul for more remote towers if it doesn't already cover that.
Because the purpose is coverage improvement without investing in cell sites. Individual cell sites are massively expensive. Deploying one thing in space that covers the same area plus way more is far less expensive.
It's worth noting that this service is a "good enough" solution at the moment - SMS/app-based text messaging, maybe voice calls, and very limited data. As wireless standards continue to evolve, it'll become more helpful for modern use cases.
The satellite emulates a cell tower, just one that is hundreds of miles away and moving very fast. So some tricks with the timing will need to happen since LTE expects the tower to be close and not moving. How big a cell is depends on how powerful the phased array beam former is on the satellite. The achievable data rates aren't very high so this is more a network of last resort when you are out of range of a tower.
It really depends on the satellite's antenna. Another comment referred to a phased array (which seems likely). If so, they can can do very clever things that make it highly directional and able to pick up weak signals.
I hate that Rogers is doing this. The Canadian government recently tried to fund community isp and connectivity for remote communities. SpaceX seems to be helping the giant shitty conglomerate beat back the interesting projects
I wish SpaceX would work with an independent group or consortium, rather than throw their power behind Rogers Communication. Fuck Rogers, they are part of the problem, and terrible for robust communications infrastructure
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 177 ms ] threadEspecially for hikers/campers who go up there for weeks at a time - would help with those situations where you want to stay camping for one more week but you can't as you've told your loved ones you'd be back by a certain date/time. Instead, a quick text to say you're okay and you plan to stay a while longer would be a nice convenience.
Unfortunate that Canada seems to be allowing the mergers of massive telecom companies without any concerns of monopolization, price fixing, etc. etc, though that's a bit of a tangent.
Also, screw canadian telecoms
Shaw isn't really a telecom in the traditional sense, they don't really have any mobile phone subscriber base. That being said, we've always had monopolization, and price fixing for those things in Canada.
(Shaw also spend some years attempting to build mobile infrastructure before buying Wind.)
Edit: per another comment, this appears more benign than I though at first reading, though anything involving Roger's is a loss for Canadians https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35719151
This sounds like the same deal SpaceX and T-Mobile have in the US, where Starlink satellites will be providing direct cell coverage to phones for basic SMS and voice call capability in remote areas.
This is separate from the Starlink home internet service which uses a dedicated phased array antenna for broadband speeds.
For non-Canadians, Rogers is the largest but also the absolute worst mobile/internet/tv provider in Canada. They routinely use grey area tactics to both bully competitors, and even bully customers.
For example, long in the past I rented an apartment in a large rental building. The building had a no solicitors rule. However, Rogers would routinely come into the building knocking on doors, somehow they got an exception with management who supplied them with a list of all non-rogers customers.
Where it got really obnoxious is that every month they would also have someone come and shove papers under your door that had a big "notice from management" on it. Photocopied like, looking for all the world like you were in trouble. Open up the paper, Rogers ad.
This is really pretty minor as far as this company goes.
This is for allowing phones in remote areas to send SMS and eventually voice calls without needing a Starlink antenna.
It’s not really in the same ballpark as Starlink’s home/RV broadband services.
To add some more context, their excuse for high prices and mediocre service is generally something to do with the size of the country, which granted they aren't exactly wrong, until you realize that roughly 90% of the entire Canadian population lives within 160km (100 miles) of a US border. Canadian telecoms are a legal cartel, for all intents and purposes.
Not a problem in other sparsely populated, geographically large countries, like Australia.
Take british columbia, a vastly big place by US standards. Drop one 50-mile circle on vancouver and you have 75% of BC's population covered in one service area. If you draw a line from the ski hills north of vancouver, to alaska, you will cross only two roads. Everything to the north is empty by us standards.
In addition, Cell phone networks need to cover the area people travel, so unless Canadians only travel in an area 11% that of those in the US, the point stands.
Honestly, that's probably not far off. Canada is enormous, but the vast majority of it is completely uninhabited or very, very sparsely populated.
There are large sections of the trans-canada highway that aren't covered (the only east west highway, and the main road across the country). I can't really count on having cell service on the highways between towns when I'm travelling in Canada so they aren't really providing much coverage there.
Just to drive the point home here's a map of Rogers coverage. They don't have a single tower in the three provinces that make up the northern half of the country. Canada, despite being large is really a VERY centralized country. 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border.
Was it data quantity that made that feasible? My Canadian plan is $45/month and has unlimited phone time and 6 gigs of data (which is great for my usage) and is on one of the big three carriers so coverage is great. Freedom mobile offers 20gb for $50, but their coverage is weaker (i.e. you're roaming outside of major cities). These convert to $33/$36 in USD. Both of these options look significantly cheaper than any plans I quickly see on the big US carriers, before even accounting for the roaming charges (albeit with more limited data)
Plus there was a time, albeit almost a decade ago now when the dollar was on par. Even about a year ago the dollar was still aiming for 0.8 rather than the 0.74 it’s flirting with right now.
Lastly, if you want an Apple Watch with cellular, you end up needing a more expensive plan from the big three rather than their sub-brands. And the Canadian government is threatening regulation to encourage carriers to offer more data for less. There was a time within the decade when $60 at Fido would get you 2GB and that was during a “double data” promo. This was 2018. https://forums.redflagdeals.com/fido-60-unlimited-canada-wid...
The plan I was referring to is an older tmobile plan with 3 lines on it. They come out to just under $50 cad per line including taxes/fees and that includes 5gb of Canadian/Mexican LTE/5g, unlimited 3g after that, as well as unlimited everything in the US, and no extra charge to call anywhere in NA.
I can roam on Bell, Telus or Rogers, so tend to get better coverage than my Canadian friends. I also get unlimited worldwide texting and 2g data when I travel for no additional charge.
If I switched to one of the new t-mobile plans, I would be paying $59/line, but that includes a free Netflix subscription, and 10gb of Canadian data.
I just priced out a roughly comparable rogers plan for the features I actually use (5gb, unlimited US calls, data in the US) and it comes to $65 CAD + $12 per day I'm in the US, or go for the unlimited US plan which is $105 CAD on a promotional offer right now. Add on another 12% for tax and a bunch of fees I'm sure I'd learn about after the fact, and keeping my US service is very competitive. Rogers new plans, are pretty new (I believe unlimited data only started in 2019 or 2020, and their definition of unlimited is 20gb).
The takeaway for me is that if I was just a single line, and I didn't leave Canada much, I would probably pay slightly less. Since I call and text the US daily, and travel there for at least a month a year, I save several hundred dollars a year on tmobile, and don't have to worry about getting billed hundreds or thousands because I forgot to buy a data pass for a trip across the border.
I don't think anyone in the US can even fathom the prices Canadians are charged for the service they get. My $80 Googlefi plan (4 lines) would cost around $500 plus a month in Canada.
Sort of the same law hack as Tesla does with their "showrooms", where you aren't in a dealership - you ultimately just order a car online from California even if you're a few states away.
I mean they're expensive, and anti-competitive, but their products and services are very good.
Think of them like Canada's Verizon.
The there is the nationwide outage that even got the federal government involved. Super ironic as high quality service was part of their justification for extremely high prices. Turns out they didn’t have basic redundancy down. I’ve never seen that kind of failure in any other company that size.
To be fair, everyone in the industry is completely awful. It is splitting hairs to say Rogers is the “worst” when they are all so completely terrible and lacking any redeeming characteristics.
SpaceX/Starlink has a nationwide license/permission from the Canadian federal government for direct to consumer LEO satellite services so it's very unlikely they would remove this as a service option.
Starlink has been revolutionary for people in some very remote part of Canada whose previous ONLY option was consumer grade geostationary Ku/Ka-band VSAT terminals at oversubscriptions ratios of 32:1 or worse. Xplornet, etc. Same tech as viasat/wildblue/hughesnet consumer stuff in USA.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rogers-shaw-merger-official...
and then this
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-industry-minister-jo...
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13745
What I'm wondering is how long it will be before we see a similar device/service for Starlink's network.
For low bandwidth applications like Swarm, perhaps a cheap 4g breakout board would work out-of-the-box with the right plan.
Also, the Starlink modems need a huge amount of power compared to the Swarm network, not really a similar application.
So for 300 USD + 15 USD / month, you can get a Garmin inReach Messenger
These RockBLOCK's are intended as a drop in comms module for remote embedded devices like weather stations.
https://docs.rockblock.rock7.com/docs/iridium-contract-costs
There are other companies such as Telus that have great coverage in rural areas, presumably because they're the ancestor of state owned BC Tel and have access to that great infrastructure.
So Rogers was faced with either having to duplicate the infrastructure that Telus already had, or do some innovative deal like this to bypass having to do that.
It all suggests that this is being done the wrong way, with great waste and cost, that all this infrastructure is a basic utility that should be done once by a state owned monopoly that is available for all to use, and several individual mobile phone companies can use it and pay for its upkeep.
Even though I'm sure it's nice for people to be able to post selfies from national parks, it will also exacerbate a growing tension between rural residents and the increasing number of tourists who mainly loiter in their cars and beside the road, have tailgates on peoples lawns, tresspass, and make a general nuissance of themselves - as distinct from hikers, campers, and trippers who are there to appreciate remote areas instead of merely using them as a platform for their instagram photos.
There's one part of Canada that pays about half of what everyone else pays for cellular service - thats Saskatchewan. Because Saskatchewan has a government-run cell carrier, SaskTel.
Canada just needs a federal crown corporation to offer cell service.
And before everyone starts, no, geography doesn't really make a huge difference in cost of providing the service. In remote rural areas you can get away with putting one tower up with LTE800 or another low frequency carrier, which will probably cover 20km in each direction from the cell site. Dense places are much more expensive to serve, requiring cell sites every <1km with a multitude of high and low frequency carriers.
However SaskTel charges $35/month for a 5GB data-only plan while Rogers charges $60. They also have a $90CAD 60GB plan which Rogers would charge checks notes $180 for.
So is it an objectively good deal, no. It is however half the national average.
I don't consider these plans unlimited; after the data allowance of 100GB speeds are shaped to <512kbit/sec which is close to unusable these days (some carriers in the UK offer similar but they consider it 'emergency' data to keep connected for basics, they wouldn't sell it as unlimited).
I think that's fair criticism. It's how this kind of plan is marketed all over North America. At one point Rogers marketed a 10MB plan as Unlimited like 10 years ago haha.
But this is a tiny, tiny distance in Canada... which has more rural roads than probably all of Europe.
Secondly, you can see how few towers SaskTel has here - https://www.sasktel.com/wps/wcm/connect/content/home/wireles... - click Saskatchewan LTE then show the various towers. Look how many towers are required for more "urban" areas in SK than the rural areas. These are pretty low density by european cities standards as well, where you can have small cells every 100m on busy streets.
In Saskatchewan and Alberta, it surprisingly is.
I'd say about 66% of the land area of Saskatchewan and Alberta has coverage on a mix of Bell, Telus and SaskTel. That's a ton of square footage.
Your statement is true of Canada in general, but not the prairies.
https://www.cellularmaps.com/regions/canada-coverage.shtml
This shows a lack of understanding, for there are endless towers where no one lives.
Recall those roads I mentioned? Towers are there too. Rural roads can go through 100s of km of brush, farmland, tundra, and have towers.
1. https://www.comparecellular.ca/coverage-maps/ - "Less than 30 percent of Canada’s geographic area is covered by Bell, Rogers, or TELUS."
I agree, let's do it!
We also have a provincial auto insurer, SGI. The prices for car insurance in Alberta or Ontario are ludicrous in comparison. The power and natural gas crowns are decent, as far as I can tell.
https://twitter.com/wingkarli/status/1582019472315289601 > Canada is just five big banks, two grocery chains, and three telecom giants in a puffer down jacket.
I'm not sure if federal crowns would be any better, but some competition would be a start.
Alberta of course massively wealthy due to the fortunes springing up out of the ground, and over the years has been able to draw Canadians from all sorts of places at times where their own home province was relatively economically depressed.
Alberta also has a conservative political culture and some unique ideas around how to organize things that were particularly different from, as you said, the "let's work together" approach of Sask under visionary leader Tommy Douglas and those that followed that social democratic road map.
So I think you had a combination of Sask folks going to Alberta to work in the oil sands and picking up the politics and coming back with it, and the centralized conservative media touting Albertan success across the border as a road map for Saskachewan success.
Of course the reality is that Alberta's success likely has a lot a lot less to do with their political policy choices, and a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that they get absolutely ginormous oil royalties that funds their every budget wish.
Saskachewan trying to replicate what Alberta has via the policy side, without the resource royalty side, well they're not going to see the same outcomes.
I think this also reflected in their bimodal provincial politics. Unlike other province, there's just two teams, and they're the polar opposites (provincial NDP squarely on the left, UCP on the very-right for folks from outside Canada).
Canada Post Corporation exists, yet sending and receiving letters/parcels is expensive, slow, and often inconvenient throughout Canada.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation exists, yet the Canadian news and media landscape is severely lacking in quality (and in my experience, CBC typically has the lowest-quality content).
VIA Rail Canada Inc. exists, yet passenger rail travel is expensive, slow, inconvenient, and quite limited throughout Canada.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation exists, yet housing is incredibly expensive throughout Canada.
Yet another federal Crown corporation isn't the answer.
Very inexpensive and accessible, and private alternatives exist. Canada Post actually does a great job all things considered. Do you really think you can get a letter to Nunavut for $1.07 faster by private courier?
Canada Post topped Canada's Most Trusted Brands list in 2020. [2]
> The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation exists, yet the Canadian news and media landscape is severely lacking in quality (and in my experience, CBC typically has the lowest-quality content).
Completely disagree on that one, and entirely opinion.
> VIA Rail Canada Inc. exists, yet passenger rail travel is expensive, slow, inconvenient, and quite limited throughout Canada.
It's actually very inexpensive - you can get from Ottawa to Toronto for like $100 CAD round trip - but yes slower than it could be, because the government chose not to invest in it. However, it has recently, and HFR along the corridor is going to be a material improvement.
As is they are much cheaper than driving, faster than driving, waaaay cheaper than flying and sometimes faster.
That said they made the list of Canada's Most Trusted Brands in the Travel category in 2022 so obviously not everyone agrees. [1]
> Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation exists, yet housing is incredibly expensive throughout Canada.
The job of CMHC is not to make housing affordable. That's the job of municipalities and zoning rules. The job of CMHC is to finance homes which they do a fantastic job of.
This doesn't make any more sense than blaming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the high rent prices in San Francisco.
Really doesn't make sense to judge them on something that isn't their job.
> Yet another federal Crown corporation isn't the answer.
So why does Saskatchewan have cell service that costs half what everyone else is paying? Sounds like it might be.
What I would say is just like SaskTel in Saskatchewan, if you don't want to use it, don't sign up. But for me, I'd be onboard in a heartbeat and you'd love them too as they pushed down the cost of cellular service even if you chose not to. Rogers, Bell and Telus plans are similarly way cheaper in Saskatchewan because they have to actually compete for once.
[1] https://www.uvic.ca/gustavson/brandtrust/assets/docs/final--...
[2] https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/our-company/ab...
The alternatives to CBC is like CKNW 980 24/7 news radio that is of the "news entertainment" style of news; the sort purely designed to generate impressions by making you angry. noooo thx.
Canada Post is great, but it’s not cheap for anything except sending a letter.
If you're looking at shipping by say USPS, then International shipping rates are determined under the United Nations Universal Postal Union. [1]
Until like 2020 it would have cost you far less to send a package from China to the US than from the US to somewhere else in the US.
Comparing the cost of domestic to foreign international shipping prices is not reflective of anything, unfortunately.
I would strongly urge you to look again at the cost of FedEx/UPS/DHL shipments into Canada. If you're looking to send a parcel, by ground, you need to add at least like $25 for brokerage. If you're shipping express, you're paying at least $70 for the package, but at least it includes brokerage.
I think this is probably just not accurate.
I just priced a 5lb FedEx Small Box going from SF to Vancouver (800mi/1287km) and it came in at $180USD/244CAD for the cheapest option.
Shipping the same box by Canada Post from Ottawa to Winnipeg (1000mi-ish) came in at $47CAD for the same service tier. $58 to Vancouver.
Ground came in at $24 which is less than the brokerage charge alone would be going international.
> Canada Post is great, but it’s not cheap for anything except sending a letter.
That's probably because Canada is bigger than the United States in land mass and has the population of California. That makes it, therefore, expensive to ship things.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Univers...
UPS and Purolator have it working....FedEx is garbage, Canada Post sucks for parcels, Local couriers are nice because they are real people who call and attempt to actually deliver the package (who would think.....)
So some would say that's just a roundabout way of praising checks notes Canada Post.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purolator_Inc.
This is for locations with no connectivity, where SpaceX satellites become very low-bandwidth Rogers towers for critical situations. Your examples are not relevant.
The rest of your post is just knee-jerk opposition luddism that doesn't apply at all.
I posted a link to AST's recent first ever demonstration of an actual satellite to cell phone voice call, and it didnt even make it onto the IRC feed. I link here again:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230425005532/en/AST...
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/ast-spacemobile-first...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/someone-just-made-the-first-ev...
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/first-ever-space-based-voice-...
This was an actual voice call between an unmodified cell phone and a satellite, not an announcement...
All these players are trying to secure deals right now[1]. They sent up more sats this year[2].
[1] https://lynk.world/news/lynk-and-vodafone-ghana-sign-contrac...
[2] https://lynk.world/news/lynk-launches-worlds-2nd-and-3rd-com...
Which I suppose would be good for those very rural farmers. Maybe places along the west coast/milford/fiordland would def benefit from it. Guess it's one of those things we wait and see how it gets rolled out. And boaties I guess. Basically anyone who can't connect to fibre, and that fibre rollout is pretty extensive as it stands!
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/26/verizon-partnering-with-amaz...
Why have cell phones communicate with the SAT directly if you can just use the SATs to deploy "normal" cell towers?
They also have a spectrum sharing agreement with T-Mobile (which is how they're planning on offering this satellite-to-phone service in the US), maybe that'll expand to Starlink providing backhaul for more remote towers if it doesn't already cover that.
It's worth noting that this service is a "good enough" solution at the moment - SMS/app-based text messaging, maybe voice calls, and very limited data. As wireless standards continue to evolve, it'll become more helpful for modern use cases.
How does this work? Do typical phones already have the hardware for this? The satellites emulate cells? (one big “cell”?)
Edit: Spotted a typo in my comment… but it’s actually a typo in the Reuters headline?
I wish SpaceX would work with an independent group or consortium, rather than throw their power behind Rogers Communication. Fuck Rogers, they are part of the problem, and terrible for robust communications infrastructure