1.2: Why Traditional Models Won't Work in Rural Canada
Today's high-speed Internet is built on a grid of backbones and Intranets so vast and varied, the Internet is often represented as a cloud in network diagrams. High-capacity fibre optic cables run across the country, connecting major network operators like Bell Canada and AT&T to form the Internet backbone. Several more layers of smaller networks branch off from this backbone, connecting universities, Internet Service Providers, and corporations to form broadband pipelines across Canada and the world. For smaller communities, the last leg of this pipeline network usually runs from a nearby city or backbone to a local switch, and it is what essentially brings broadband to that community.
The backbones that criss-cross the country sometimes do pass through sparsely-populated areas. Small towns and rural areas not directly along the path of the backbone, however, are often left out of such deployments despite usually being within a few kilometres of them. This can easily be compared to the highway bypass problem, where some communities are chosen to be along the path of a new highway while others nearby are not, leading to disadvantages and hardship for those bypassed communities. Of course, some populated rural areas of the country are so remote that the only option for broadband is satellite.
Recent numbers [52] are pegging the installation cost for on-pole or underground fibre optic lines at between $10,000 and $20,000 per kilometre. At this price, Internet providers have no business case for running a fibre pipeline to a small community or rural area. While these last-leg pipelines are usually assumed to be fibre, they may also be built with less expensive microwave antennas or satellite technology. This kind of outside-the-box thinking may be necessary if rural communities ever wish to have access to broadband Internet service.
High speed Internet services like DSL or Cable are known as last mile networks because they provide the last mile or two of infrastructure needed to connect a home or building to the network. They are connected to a high-capacity broadband pipeline in a community and operate through existing telephone or cable networks. DSL and cable have flourished in urban centres, but for the most part, telephone and cable companies haven't bothered with rural areas. It all comes down to economics. For DSL to be made available in a community, a pipeline has to exist and a device called a DSLAM has to be installed at the neighbourhood's central switching office, or C.O.. Broadband DSL is then available at up to a distance of 5.5km from the C.O. [72: 131-134]. Most larger communities have a number of C.O.'s serving various neighbourhoods, but in rural areas the C.O.'s are often spaced far apart, with only a small number of houses actually within the 5.5km operational range of DSL. Thus it is generally not economically feasible for the phone company to spend money installing a DSLAM in a rural area when so few customers are reachable by the technology. The explanation for cable is somewhat simpler: cable television networks simply don't exist in many rural areas of Canada. Where the cable infrastructure does exist, significant upgrades to the infrastructure are needed in order for it to handle cable Internet service. Like with DSL, it is not economically feasible for cable companies to spend money upgrading their network infrastructure in rural areas when it could benefit so few customers.
In order for a broadband network technology to be economically feasible in a rural area, it would have to be less expensive to deploy than traditional wired networks. If a new customer wants to join the network, it shouldn't require a large investment in infrastructure that will only benefit that one customer. A rural-friendly broadband technology needs to be in line with DSL and cable as far as cost to the customer, bandwidth and latency go, and it also has to be extensible and inexpensive to deploy in order to support the special geographic conditions that rural areas face. What are the most physically and economically feasible technologies for bringing broadband Internet service to rural communities? While a number of candidates exist and will be explored by this thesis, the family of technologies known as fixed wireless stands out as the most likely answer. By the end of this thesis, we will know how it stacks up against the others.
© Jake Cormier, 2006 [jake (at) stormcloudstudios.com]
Completed as a partial requirement for the degree of Bachelor of Science (specialized)
Department of Computer Science :: Algoma University College :: Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario :: Spring 2006