Tech
Bringing Fibre to Toronto
I don't think it's much of a surprise to anyone that the quality of Internet Service Providers in Toronto isn't what it could be. At the moment, you're either forced to go with cable, or DSL, and it's clear that both Bell and Rogers have those markets locked up tight. And while its clear that these aren't the only options, they might as well be - most so-called "alternative" providers rely on the same lines used by the likes of Rogers and Bell, making them subject to the wonderful world of bandwidth throttling and deep packet inspection.
The CRTC has made it clear that it doesn't want to get involved in such issues. Meanwhile, hearings on net neutrality aren't even planned to begin until the summer; frankly, I'm not entirely sure what the CRTC even does nowadays.
It strikes me as just a little strange that ISPs like Rogers and Bell can continue to increase internet access fees, while further reducing the functionality of their services. Why should I be paying more, only to have my bandwidth capped, and my upload speeds remain at a paltry 1Mbps? To me, it's a clear sign that the way users access internet content continues to change dramatically, and the big Canadian ISPs simply lack the infrastructure to keep up.
As consumers watch the backbone of Canadian internet buckle under the strain of streaming media and high-definition content, it begs the question - why aren't we trying to keep up?
Fibre optic networks, the most viable option for bolstering our aging infrastructure, are virtually non-existent here in Toronto. While Bell claims to offer a fibre optic service of its own, dubbed Optimax, it's largely misleading; the fibre infrastructure in question does exist, but travels nowhere near one's house. Instead customers continue to use their regular DSL modems, but connect to a distant receiving point that routes data via fibre the rest of the way.
In short, nowhere close to a true fibre optic solution, and an inelegant implementation at that.
What Toronto needs is a true fibre optic network. In the US, Verizon's FiOS service is an excellent example of the sort of implementation that I hope will make its way here in the near future. Not only does it deliver a true fibre optic connection right to one's house, but it manages to do so at speeds that are nearly five-times faster than Rogers's best offerings. Oh, and for about the same price, too.
Some might argue that there isn't the need, nor desire for fibre-powered internet just yet - but considering the sorry state of our local ISPs, there could never be a better time for an infrastructure overhaul. Services like FiOS have proved that the fibre is not only popular, but huge improvement for the majority of US customers; I doubt consumers will complain all that much at the introduction of a considerably faster ISP alternative - with competitive price points to boot.
All we need now is someone to step up - and in the process, set a new standard for internet access, not just in Toronto, but Canada as well.
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It makes Roger's and Bell look like a mom and pop operation. Now I pay over $60 a month plus fees on Rogers, plus extra if I ever go over their 95GB a month limit, for their meesly 10Mbps traffic shaped service. The first viable alternative (Teksavvy comes to mind, but they are too pricey and to slow) and Roger's will never get another dime out of me for as long as I live.
@Matthew: The reason we aren't seeing fiber to the home (like FIOS) is because it simply isn't affordable for the ISPs. It cost Verizon around $3000 per home to put in the necessary equipment for FIOS when they first rolled out the program. Let's say your average internet bill is around $50 a month, it would take ~ 5 years just to make back the cost of the initial investment, let alone the standard operating costs. However, they basically said they HAD to do it because Comcast et al. would be rolling out next gen networks in the future, and Verizon had to establish a foot hold in the market before the cable providers did.
However, Bell is not presented with that problem in Canada, because they only have 1 competitor, and that competitor has no plans to move any faster than Bell itself.
My point is that Verizon is basically losing money with FIOS, but it's a necessary evil to future proof against a large number of competitors. That type of business environment doesn't exist in Canada, and so we end up with short end of the stick.
The US and Canadian broadband infrastructures are abysmal. With only between 25 and 27% of the population having access to high speed internet, yet with 71% of North America online, there's already a strain on what's available. Now with HDTV, our not-just-internet-providers are handing over more of that delicious bandwidth real estate to tv subscribers who generally pay more money for their service.
So who's to blame? HDTV! Just kidding, it's still the asshole cable companies.
CRTC is a direct result of few Canadians hopping to keep everything Canadian owned. That means as consumers we pay hefty fees for cable, Internet and mobile data simply because of a lack of competition in the market. Ofourse Bell and Rogers being the ruthless thrives that they are, heavily lobby to keep CRTC the same; a protective shield for oligopoly.
We're getting shafted because no outside competitor is allowed in Canada to go head-to-head with these assholes.
http://www.torix.net/stats.php
... Toronto's internet traffic has doubled in the last year, the rate of growth is increasing, and they're averaging what looks like an aggragate of 12 gigabits per second.
I can't imagine that growth could continue without some type of technology change (fios, etc). Perhaps someone who works down at 151 Front might chime in?
They do have fiber that comes into the building, which goes up to a router on every third floor (give or take). From there, it's broken down from fiber to Ethernet. I have to agree about the speeds -- I was there for years and it was consistently fast. Since moving, it's what I miss the most.
I would love for there to be a FiOS-like service available -- I'd pick it up in a second if was available.
I guess that's what happens when you spend more time trying to show off the letters ER than actually improving your piece of shit services. Its not nice to see people lose jobs but it'd be so awesome if everyone of Bell's executives & their marketing team lost their jobs and was sent off to a gulag in Siberia (along with Toronto's miscreants).
http://www.canadianisp.ca
I'm on Teksavvy (which I recommend), I used to be on Magma before it got bought by Primus.
Does anyone know if HydroToronto is ever going to start selling their fibre equivalent service to the public(1)? The condos are theoretically wired for it.
(1) HydroToronto serves my work and speedtest.net shows I get 86Mbps down 77Mbps up to my desktop.
There is fibre everywhere downtown serving all manner of businesses but they conveniently manage to avoid serving almost all of the condos. I'd blame kick backs (but I want to avoid libel) so I'll blame short sightedness. Wiring a building only to support the two most hated providers is a egregious.
[soapbox]
I live 100 meters from the CBC building, 500 meters from the CN tower, but my options are pretty much the same as if I were in the Yukon. (I'm not kidding look at the first link). Stuck at 8Mbps @ home. But all in all I'd still rather be downtown than the Yukon.
@everyone: I wasn't even aware of CityPlace's fibre connection until now, and frankly, I'm impressed. Technically, it makes sense - CityPlace is located fairly close to 151 front street, which, I gather, is Toronto's major fibre and internet hub. If anything, it's a low-cost way for Telus to test out a new system without a wide-scale rollout.
That being said, I don't want to make it seem as if there isn't already some degree of fibre infrastructure in place throughout the downtown - the business need has existed for quite a while. Yet, the consumer need is quickly catching up, and my complaint is that consumer-oriented ISPs clearly have no public desire to use and improve fibre-based services for Toronto customers. And while CityPlace is a good example of a speedy fibre service, what's needed now is to bring that same level of service to the masses.
@m: I would kill to have those up/downstream speeds you're reporting. The fact that it's that fast *and* near-equal stream speeds amazes me.
I recommend you read this article, and then demand something like it if you ever build a house:
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/07/customer-owned-fiber.ars
That said, I still wish I had a 100mbs connection to my house.
There is actually miles of fibre optic cable under the city. Enough cable to supply our increasing needs for 25 years. I know, my father was contracted to help install it.
It was being installed by a company called 360 Networks. An up and comming player on the tech scene. They built the lines with the intent to rent or resell to other telecommunications companies. Nortel was one of them, and probably the biggest investor. When Nortel went down, 360 Networks went down with them. Didn't help that in the wake of the tech crash other investors pulled out or went out of business as well.
These pipelines don't go house to house mind you, but were meant to be a backbone for other telecommuncations companies to work from. And it was one hell of a backbone.
But now, it sits unused. This happened all over the place and was so common they created a name for the post crash fibre optic networks: 'Dark Fibre'
So is it doomed to sit underground to rot? Well, not really. A few years ago Bell purchased 360 networks and their massive network of dark fibre. Perhaps Bell is utilizing some of it to run their Optimax system, but there is certainly much, much more out there that they aren't even using, nor have they made any attempt to extend those backbones into neighbourhoods and homes.
TorIX is a critical component for many Toronto ISPs, with 13Gb of sustained traffic each second (and as high as 16Gb), connecting more than 80 peers to the switching fabric.
For those not familiar with TorIX, we have two Cisco switches housed at Canada's most important telecom building: 151 Front Street, in Toronto. From there, TorIX enables more than 80 different networks (such as Rogers, Google, Akamai, TekSavvy, Accelerated Connections, EGate, The Wire, Beanfield, Blink, Primus, Cogeco and others) to connect to each other to send IP traffic.
Traffic between network peers remains "local" since the peers are connected to each other via the TorIX switching fabric. This results in IP traffic avoiding the public Internet, resulting in lower latency connections, increased security and reliability. Also very important in VoIP provider networks.
To use a real world example: If you're a voice over IP customer of HIP Communications with DSL from Accelerated Connections and you make a phone call, chances are that call would be connected over TorIX (since ACI/HIP and Primus are peers on TorIX). In contrast, a call from your a non-TorIX ISP (ie. Bell Canada) to Vonage, could result in poorer quality, jitter, dropouts, etc. as the call path would take the public Internet path instead - a network that nobody really controls.
I could go on about TorIX as it really is a critical component of Canada's ISP scene, but this is really the right place. You can look me up at benlucier.ca and I'd be happy to connect with you to discuss further.
Getting back to your original question though, based on our peering stats, it's difficult for TorIX to paint an accurate picture of IP growth in Canada that proves the need for faster bandwidth. However, one could argue that an increase in traffic between peers correlates into the bigger picture and that trend certainly indicates there is a substantial increase in traffic year over year. But as Canadians using the Internet we don't need trends or stats to tell us that do we? Sadly, we already know the path we're headed down.
As a service provider veteran, it is my personal opinion that in order for Canada to succeed in a knowledge-based economy, an expensive investment in a world class infrastructure is needed and I will have that debate with anyone who would argue against it.
For the time being, I'd like to see more competitive pricing so that more lower-income Canadians can get online.
They are now saying it's around $700 for installation cost
to the home for FiOS (Not $3000).
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=571
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/So-Far-FiOS-NaySayers-Proven-Wrong-101064
In any case, we are not talking about doing all of Canada, so this $23 Billion is a moot point. There should be no reason why Toronto can't be wired up.
Because of that it's in their own best interest to stall the rollout and use of high bandwidth internet service until they can figure out a way to prevent the internet from destroying the revenue they get from selling you separate cable, phone and internet connections instead of just one big pipe.
Right now I get my internet via Teksavvy and use Tomato to get around the throttle. I download my television for free and use Skype for my home phone. What this means is that I pay $35 a month for exactly the same service that I'd have to pay Rogers about $180 a month for if I got their cable, internet, and phone separately. It's not like they aren't aware that this is possible, easy, and popular. If they eliminated bandwidth caps, throttling and improved the speeds they would put themselves out of business very quickly.
And don't give me any of that crap about bittorrent throttling being necessary to ensure quality of service. The documentation shows that almost none of Bell's capacity is even anywhere close to saturation. And somehow a tiny company like Teksavvy can afford to provide unlimited connections, why can't Bell?
You want improved internet access? The only way that's going to happen is if the government steps in and forces Bell and Rogers to separate their ISP business from their content provider business. Until then they have a vested interest in keeping the internet too slow to use for media.
Gotta agree with Eric.
Being both an ISP, and a content provider has large degrees of conflict of interest, though no doubt, they can legally prove that this is not a problem.
In the case of Bell, instead of putting money in to expand their network, they opted to install DPI, and just market everything as hokey-dokey.
Infrastructure, especially gov't subsidized kind, should not belong to companies who do not serve the public interest. There should be way more strings attached in terms of what they can or cannot do.
Jokes aside, good article, good discussion.
The startup capital required is _not_ a moot point. It is the single most important point. It is the only reason that Bell is not rolling out fiber to the home. If they only wired up Toronto, it would make it even less worthwhile for them in the long run. You have to remember that these companies are in it to maximize their profit. Advancing the state of the art is of no direct concern to them or their shareholders.
@Eric: You make a really good point. Although I'm not sure if that factors in to their decisions quite as much as you make it seem. 95% of their customers don't know what VOIP or BitTorrent is. We can't get Hulu or any other American TV streams in Canada. In the short term, I don't think their content business is facing any serious threat. In the long term, it's inevitable that their content business will fall to be replaced by streaming internet content. But they won't be able to keep up with this bullshit in the long term. They will either be forced by the government, or through competition to provide better service. It's really a lack of competition in Canada that keeps our technology advancements at such a slow pace.
1. re: Torix network usage increases. A chunk of the increase in Torix use is due to:
a) An increased number of peers (eg: Eastlink and SaskTel)
b) A rational consumer shift toward ISPs that use Torix. For example, big bandwidth users switching from Bell-->TekSavvy to get around the throttle or bandwidth caps
2. I'd pay (well, I will once I have an income) quite a bit to set up a nice unrestricted fibre connection with a buffet of homing options to choose from at different prices. Imagine being able to selectively route a chunk of your data through Cogent at $x/unit or Peer1 at $2x/unit etc.
3. I also disagree with the claims that it would be (substantially) more expensive in Canada due to it being a less populous/smaller country. This would only be an explanation for low-density areas not getting it, it does not explain why dense residential areas are not getting it.
4. Toronto Hydro Telecom got bought out by Cogeco, which is the equivalent of Rogers in a number of areas.
Bell appeals CRTC decision.
"BCE asked the cabinet yesterday to address its request on an urgent basis in order to avoid putting a damper on innovation and productivity by interfering with the very investments needed to foster economic recovery, such as those being undertaken by Bell and other telecom companies."
They are pretty much threatening to stop upgrading the network, unless they get their way.
BCE propaganda piece:
http://tinyurl.com/bftj35
A good discussion:
http://tinyurl.com/aglmdw
It rocks. Verizon will make it's money back in three to five years (sooner if I load up on PPV movies and extras).
Am a web producer trying to figure out how to do content creation and explotation from Toronto.
Not easy. Doable (obviously) but, man, the monopolization of the internet here makes it really difficult.
Which brings me to my point: if Canada is to truly compete with the rest of the world, everyone that lives in a big city (or close to one) needs access to Fios like fibre networks.