New basic service standards not ‘possible’ in the North: Northwestel

BCE Inc.’s Northwestel is claiming that due to long distances in its coverage area — and the physics of the speed of light — new CRTC network quality standards are not achievable in the North, though a technology advocate casts doubt on those claims. In a July decision, the CRTC determined that to be considered “high quality,” internet service providers (ISPs) must offer round trip connections between the customer’s modem and the nearest “Tier 1” city (which include major urban areas in each province), that have under 50 milliseconds (ms) of latency and a threshold of 0.25 per cent packet loss. But in its review-and-vary application filed Friday, the telecom serving the Northwest Territories, The Yukon and Nunavut expressed worries about the feasibility of the decision. It pointed out that there are no Tier 1 cities found in the northern parts of Canada, and as such the distances over which connections travel keep the lower numbers out of Northwestel’s reach. “ got it tougher than everybody else as they’ve got further to go. That’s a fair point,” said Robin Winsor, president and CEO of digital technology advocacy group Cybera. Northwestel said it’s concerned that given the 50 ms round-trip threshold, “even the southernmost Northern communities become edge cases and some communities will never be able to achieve what the Commission deems to be a basic level of service.” It asked the CRTC that for a “latency threshold set at 100 ms, round-trip, from the customer's premise to a Tier 1 city and/or that Tier 1 cities be established in the North.” The lower these numbers are on a network, the better the network performs. Both of these metrics ensure features like video games and real-time video conferencing work with a high degree of consistency. The decision was a follow-up to the 2016 move by the Commission to mandate access to internet download speeds of 50 Mbps and 10 Mbps of upload speeds. The application explained that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to improve latency times with hardware upgrades. Latency is a function of distance and if a provider has already deployed the most advanced technology, light-transmitting fibre, it’s limited by the physics of the speed of light. “Unfortunately, physics dictates the speed of light and it is not possible, based on current or foreseeable technology, to reduce the latency experienced by a communication travelling a certain distance from point A to point B beyond a certain point,” wrote Northwestel. However, Winsor isn’t so sure. “To say that is physically impossible, and in they're saying no foreseeable future technology will help, I do not agree. It's possible now,” he said. He used a chart found in the northern telecom’s application that did include a 43 ms round trip between Calgary and Whitehorse. “They show it in their own data, and it's just going to get better and better as the infrastructure matures,” Winsor continued. He also calculated that light would travel the roughly 7000 km round trip by road between Calgary and Inuvik, N.W.T, at 23 ms. Using low-earth-orbit satellites as an example of future technology, Winsor said since they operate much closer to planet, the latency ratings will eventually be acceptable under the new standards. Beyond the potential physical limit on the technology, the northern telecom brought up a another couple of concerns. Northwestel pointed out that after the decision, there’s an implication that future broadband infrastructure build out in the North could be excluded from federal subsidies. Additionally, Northwestel cited a potential misinterpretation by the CRTC to question whether such a low threshold is even necessary to qualify internet service as high quality. It argued that the 50 ms benchmark is a aggressive target, and one that came from a misinterpretation of evidence submitted by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA). Quoting CIRA’s submission, which says a high quality connection “has an average latency between 50ms and 100ms round-trip,” Northwestel said that the commission made a mistake when it claimed that CIRA recommended a cut-off of 50 ms. CIRA was unable to return comment before publication of this article. Winsor said he believes that these goals are needed to leverage the full potential of future connectivity applications. “If you want to do remote surgery, if you want to limit the number of people who get medevacs because you actually have telemedicine… it just makes sense to get the quality up, and not say: ‘Hey you're in the north, too bad,’” he said. — With reporting by Bryson Masse at bmasse@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

New basic service standards not ‘possible’ in the North: Northwestel

News | August 17, 2018

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New basic service standards not ‘possible’ in the North: Northwestel

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