Ontario's severed ties with Starlink impedes access to legal services in remote First Nations
Ontario's severed ties with Starlink impedes access to legal services in remote First Nations
Indigenous legal advocates in northwestern Ontario are sounding the alarm over the Ontario government's cancellation of its contract with Starlink, citing concerns with people's access to legal services in remote First Nations.
Last month, Premier Doug Ford announced he'd be ripping up the $100-million deal with Elon Musk's internet provider, as a retaliatory measure in the ongoing Canada-U.S. trade war.
But in northwestern Ontario, this means the end of the Starlink-Navigator Program delivered by Nishnawbe-Aski Legal Services Corporation (NALSC), which "permitted community members, who often do not have access to internet, or reliable internet, an opportunity to participate in virtual courts."
It's shit but it was also really bad that they had to use that. We need our own infrastructure for stuff like this.
This is what I was talking about the other day, but the regressives just mass downvoted and claimed I was some kind of Trump lover. You can't just get rid of excellent technologies just because you're emotional about who runs the company.
You can't just yell and cry at Tesla dealerships, block roads or harass citizens because of whatever political justification you've got in your head. That's selfish and serves only to vindicate your personal feelings while holding back progress.
A more viable solution would have been to let Starlink build the infrastructure and then lobby for a Canadian telecommunications company to buy them out once they have the means to maintain and expand that infrastructure.
Starlink isn't the only satellite phones and internet available in Canada, not to mention all the alternatives you could get.
For example, how about cell towers? If the government paid for them, then no individual company can monopolize them, so anybody could get access to their use.
Not to mention that Spain's setting up their own satellite internet services as well Starlink style, so why pay the Trumpist when we can pay an actual ally that hasn't blatantly betrayed all their alliances and agreements?
There is no Canadian alternative that can provide a service like Starlink. I live in a rural area, and they're literally the only way I can get a reliable internet connection. I've tried Xplornet and Mobile Broadband, neither can provide a reliable connection, or are have prohibitive bandwidth caps.
I'm not even that far from Toronto, I'm technically still in the GTA. There are no cell towers nearby due to the community protesting against them going up. I'm lucky to get a single bar on a clear day.
I'm all for using a Canadian alternative, but there just isn't one for a lot of people.
Starlink offers the low latency that others can't provide which is needed for more real time applications and at a much more affordable rate. Maybe in the future there will be another (edit: low latency) network that rural people can rely on, but that isn't today, or tomorrow, or next year, or the year after.
Do we know if it is even possible for another company to take over starlink infrastructure ? These are satellites. It’s not like they’re cables in the ground.
Satellites that have to communicate with a ground station, unless they want to do all the traffic in a region over the laser links, but those links will have their own limitations.
I'm not sure what the ground infrastructure is specifically, is it spacex hardware that connects to local ISP stuff or is it their own ground based infrastructure. That ground infrastructure is usually what part of getting approved in a country involves. Doing only laser links for a whole country would be too much. (Edit: I mean it'd technically be doable, but it'd greatly reduce their network bandwidth vs having a closer ground station, so fewer users and lower speeds)
The other option would be a hybrid situation where starlink backhauls one of our telecos internet but the local infrastructure is built and owned by them. In the future you could then backhaul with another satellite network in theory. Basically drop a 4g/5g tower in the middle of nowhere and connect it to Starlink.
Your last paragraph makes it sound like you don’t understand what starlink is. Your middle paragraph is just wrong - peaceful protest is legal in Canada, and your paragraph doesn’t distinguish from unlawful activities like property damage. Finally, your first paragraph - I would 100% be behind you if they were talking about banning you from privately purchasing a starlink kit. This isn’t that. This is a huge public works investment, so there are many options available, and they have to consider things you don’t consider as a simple customer.
I feel badly for remote communities that were looking forward to these services, but Starlink is a security threat directly connected to a hostile nation that has been making overt threats to Canada. Moreover, we have already seen Musk will direct the company to turn off access to people he doesn't like. There would have been nothing stopping Musk (his lackeys) from eavesdropping on communications and then cutting it off when he felt like it.
The only real way is to invest in other providers, preferably Canadian, preferably public, but most fundamentally anyone that's not MAGA.
Maybe I'm missing something, but he ripped up a contract that was just recently signed. This seems to be related to existing contracts that are separate from the 100m contract.
It's tough to balance the worth for me on this one. Should we expect these communities to have to rely on internet when they are clearly so broken off, or should we be providing these services as infrastructure as a country through installation of cables to connect them (which would likely admittedly be tough with the distances through bushes).
I'd argue the best option is to continue funding this service separately, just to keep the users up north online for their court visits, while working on establishing our own service. I'd prefer if we didn't have to litter the skies with satellites for our solution as well, I don't like the amount of space junk above us currently.
At which point that would require funding from our government, and it looks like regardless of who gets in, we're going into austerity measures, so I won't be holding breath that our R&D goes into this service.
Tough one and unfortunately it looks like the north is going to be underserved. Which, also unfortunately, with the number of voters/people up there, is likely to continue as I doubt this will be a focus on people's voting decisions. Especially not 4 years from now when we have another provincial election.