It’s been almost 2 weeks since the small community of Olds, AB became the first location in Canada to provide all of its residents ultra fast internet. A community-owned, non-profit, internet service provider called O-Net has built a fibre to the premise (FTTP) network to provide the fastest internet available for as little as $57 a month. To put that into perspective, Shaw currently offers high-speed 25 (which is 40 times slower) for $55/month. O-net secured a $2.5 million grant from the Alberta government to plan its network and build a community facility at the library. The institute also managed to get a $6 million loan from the town of Olds to build the network.
In the US, Google Fibre recently launched a pilot project in Kansas City which provides the same speed of internet for $70/month. Google says that you can stream five high-definition videos at the same time with multiple devices.
In 2010, stats Can did a survey showing that 8 in 10 Canadians have internet access at home. The average speed in canada is 16mb/s and personally I’m crawling by at 12mb/s. Here are some quick Canadian internet stats, courtesy of 6S Marketing.
- 27.4 Million Canadians are online
- 25% of those Canadians would give up TV over their smart phone
- 17.2 hours per week are spent online
- 4.8 Billion Google searches are done by Canadians each month
In the age of cloud computing and streaming HD video from all over the globe, the speed of your internet is something to pay attention to. No longer just the first person shooters and AV nerds streaming 4K video need to be aware. There are more and more devices in our homes, with high bandwidth absorbing apps keeping us connected. Faster internet will allow more businesses to be flexible on working from home and universities to give an enhanced distance learning experience. Even in the office or lecture hall if everyone can be connected at the same time to high-speed wifi, the world is your technological oyster. Health care will change, attending concerts and sporting events will change, even transportation will change with the new speeds of wireless service.
Data availability at these rates will change the way we live much further beyond streaming 5 HD videos at the same time. Canada is the only G8 nation without a national broadband plan. Congratulations to the Olds community for their initiative.
- NT
