The company said the technology will provide a homegrown alternative to high-speed internet service offered to rural Canadians through SpaceX's Starlink low-earth orbit satellites.
Geostationary satellites have high latency. 700 ms latency means it has a minimum of one and a half seconds of delay in a conversation. That’s going to make Zoom/Teams/WebEx extremely annoying. It’s also going to make online multiplayer gaming impossible.
LEO constellations are really the only option for modern satellite internet. I’m on Starlink but will happily switch back to terrestrial internet once Bell gets fiber to my door. They surveyed my road a few weeks ago so maybe in a couple of years.
There has been a high speed Bell connection just a few kilometres out of range of my neighbourhood for 10 years. After a few years of begging for it to be extended and hearing that it was coming in ‘3-6 months’ I gave up hoping that I would ever have a terrestrial connection.
The end of the fiber coming out of the local CO is in front of the summer home for the rich family from the US. That’s about 3 km and a direction bored crossing of a county road and the 416 from my house. The surveyors told me that they were surveying the poles for Bell fiber and they told my neighbor down the road the same thing but added that the fiber construction was not budgeted yet. I think we’ll be lucky to see anything happen before the summer of 2025.
I’m on starlink too. Bell recently ran fibre by my front door but I won’t be switching when they come knocking. During hurricane Fiona my starlink kept working as long as I gave it power. Bell took 2 months to get out and repair my neighbours downed phone line! If the fibre was in the ground I’d switch, but I don’t want my internet coming through 50km of rickety poles along tree lined roads.
Geostationary satellites have high latency. 700 ms latency means it has a minimum of one and a half seconds of delay in a conversation. That’s going to make Zoom/Teams/WebEx extremely annoying. It’s also going to make online multiplayer gaming impossible.
LEO constellations are really the only option for modern satellite internet. I’m on Starlink but will happily switch back to terrestrial internet once Bell gets fiber to my door. They surveyed my road a few weeks ago so maybe in a couple of years.
There has been a high speed Bell connection just a few kilometres out of range of my neighbourhood for 10 years. After a few years of begging for it to be extended and hearing that it was coming in ‘3-6 months’ I gave up hoping that I would ever have a terrestrial connection.
The end of the fiber coming out of the local CO is in front of the summer home for the rich family from the US. That’s about 3 km and a direction bored crossing of a county road and the 416 from my house. The surveyors told me that they were surveying the poles for Bell fiber and they told my neighbor down the road the same thing but added that the fiber construction was not budgeted yet. I think we’ll be lucky to see anything happen before the summer of 2025.
Until then, I’m going to stay on StarLink.
I’m on starlink too. Bell recently ran fibre by my front door but I won’t be switching when they come knocking. During hurricane Fiona my starlink kept working as long as I gave it power. Bell took 2 months to get out and repair my neighbours downed phone line! If the fibre was in the ground I’d switch, but I don’t want my internet coming through 50km of rickety poles along tree lined roads.