You’re going to be shocked, but: Canadians really, really like the idea of inexpensive high-speed internet.
After the CBC ran an article profiling OneGigabit, a Vancouver start-up offering fibre internet with a staggering one gigabit per second download speed, the company was swamped with calls from people looking for their own faster connection to the tubes.
Sadly, this service, which is about sixty times faster than Canada’s terrible average and will cost a scant $45 to $65 a month, probably won’t be coming to you anytime soon. Currently, service is limited to condo-dwelling Vancouverites.
According to Eric Kuhnke, founder, “it is not presently economical to extend fiber optic based service to an individual residence due to the high costs of outdoor fiber optic cable construction.”
Basically, OneGigabit will hook up entire condo towers to their high-speed service; they partner with strata councils, property managers, condo boards to link up whole buildings. The building gets a router in the basement, and individual suites get hooked up via cat6 or fibre optic cable. Given the economies of scale present, it’s pretty clear why they can’t offer individual residences service yet.
That said, we hope for their swift expansion so that we can finally play TF2 without apologizing to our teammates for our frosty Canadian internet speeds.
