{"id":23196,"date":"2025-04-15T22:57:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T22:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/23196\/"},"modified":"2025-04-15T22:57:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T22:57:16","slug":"what-should-a-northern-internet-subsidy-look-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/23196\/","title":{"rendered":"What should a northern internet subsidy look like?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Northerners need a monthly internet subsidy to offset the cost of getting online, telecoms regulator the CRTC decided in January.<\/p>\n

In the weeks since, companies who provide internet to the North have been telling the CRTC what they think that subsidy<\/a> should look like \u2013 how much people should get and who should get it.<\/p>\n

Governments, First Nations and residents have contributed comments, too.<\/p>\n

The CRTC is now tasked with making a decision in the months ahead. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a breakdown of the feedback the CRTC received.<\/p>\n

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The CRTC\u2019s initial guidance<\/p>\n

In January, the CRTC said internet prices in the North \u201care too high,\u201d quality is \u201cfar lower and less reliable\u201d than in the south and there is not enough choice of provider.<\/p>\n

The CRTC said northerners should expect a subsidy that bridges the gap between what they now pay and what southerners pay. The regulator noted that residents of the North \u201con average pay $72 more per month for internet\u201d than the rest of Canada, but only one in five northern households had \u201cinternet access that meets their daily needs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The subsidy will be paid for from the National Contribution Fund, into which telecoms companies across Canada pay fees.<\/p>\n

Cash from the subsidy would be paid to the telecoms company that offers you service, then your bill would be reduced accordingly \u2013 with a line on your bill showing how much the subsidy was worth.<\/p>\n

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The CRTC then opened it out for comment. What should the subsidy be and what else do providers, governments and others think?<\/p>\n

Northwestel says $25 subsidy is enough <\/p>\n

Northwestel said a $25 monthly subsidy would be a \u201cmeaningful amount of money for consumers in the Far North.\u201d (The CRTC defines the Far North as all three territories plus some parts of northern BC and Alberta.)<\/p>\n

The company, which supplies internet to many NWT homes, said its $25 figure is \u201csupported by data regarding price disparities between the Far North and elsewhere in Canada after considering income differences.\u201d Northwestel said that figure would also be low enough to avoid any company receiving a subsidy that\u2019s higher than the amount the customer pays \u2013 in other words, making a profit on the subsidy.<\/p>\n

Northwestel says only residents, not businesses, should get the subsidy, and companies that offer the same price nationwide should be excluded.<\/p>\n

Who offers the same price nationwide? Starlink.<\/p>\n

Giving the subsidy to Starlink customers \u201cwill produce the perverse result that subscribers in the Far North will have less expensive service than equivalent subscribers in southern Canada, and that revenues collected from southern Canadian consumers will be used to subsidize Starlink\u2019s bottom line,\u201d Northwestel asserted.\u00a0 (The National Contribution Fund, from which any subsidy will be paid, is essentially built up through tiny contributions from everyone who pays for any telecoms service across Canada.)<\/p>\n

Lastly, Northwestel said the Peace River Regional District \u2013 which had asked for the inclusion of more northeastern BC communities in the subsidy \u2013 should be told \u2018no.\u2019<\/p>\n

Northwestel is still owned by Bell, despite an Indigenous consortium being in the process of trying to acquire the company<\/a>. That deal has not yet gone through.<\/p>\n

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Starlink wants to be included<\/p>\n

Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, which operates Starlink, usually cannot be dragged kicking and screaming to comment on anything. But Starlink showed up for the subsidy discussion.<\/p>\n

Starlink wants a subsidy based solely on location \u2013 in other words, any subscriber in the Far North gets it \u2013 and argues its customers should be included.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarlink has made a commercial decision to harmonize its pricing across all of Canada, rather than increasing pricing in the Far North to offset the higher costs,\u201d the company wrote. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis uniform national pricing model is designed in a way that is entirely beneficial for remote residents of the Far North. Bell and Northwestel are essentially asking the CRTC to adopt policies that discourage this type of decision-making, and encourages nationwide providers to charge higher rates in the Far North compared to the rest of Canada. This is an outcome that the CRTC surely wants to avoid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starlink insists it also faces \u201cchallenges\u201d operating in Canada\u2019s North, despite its service coming solely from satellites rather than any cable infrastructure on the ground.<\/p>\n

Excluding it from the subsidy would \u201cserve to reduce competition by prioritizing and selectively subsidizing more costly and less effective legacy technologies,\u201d the company asserted.<\/p>\n

$10 is appropriate, says Telus<\/p>\n

Telus said the subsidy should only be available to lower-income households.<\/p>\n

Limiting who can receive the subsidy would \u201cdiscipline\u201d the amount of money needed to fund it, Telus argued.<\/p>\n

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Many other interveners argued for subsidies at or near the $72 that the CRTC said was the existing difference between the average northern and southern monthly internet bill.<\/p>\n

The Taku River Tlingit First Nation said any subsidy \u201cshould offset the entire difference.\u201d SSi Canada, a smaller northern internet provider, said the subsidy should cover \u201cthe largest possible percentage\u201d of the difference.<\/p>\n

Iristel, another smaller northern operator, said pinning the subsidy at $72 would be appropriate.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnsurprisingly, the four largest telecommunications companies in Canada (Bell, Telus, Rogers, and Quebecor) have proposed small subsidy amounts, or no subsidy at all,\u201d Iristel noted. <\/p>\n

\u201cRather than engage in meaningful discussions on the appropriate amounts, they seek to limit their contribution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iristel stated that the \u201csubsidy being proposed accounts for 0.005 percent of the annual Canadian telecommunications revenue,\u201d referring to other providers\u2019 concern that the whole of Canada is being asked to pay for the subsidy. (The Financial Post had, in February, run a column<\/a> decrying the idea that all of Canada should be on the hook for a northern subsidy. At least one internet provider cited that column in their response to the CRTC.)<\/p>\n

GNWT gives CRTC two options<\/p>\n

The NWT government said the North is essentially split into two groups: people who have fibre access and people who need satellite-based internet.<\/p>\n

The GNWT said one option could be to split the subsidy based on those two groups. The territory recommended a subsidy of $45 a month for residents and $70 for businesses in fibre communities, then $70 a month for residents and $95 for businesses in satellite communities.<\/p>\n

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The other option, the territory added, is for one \u201cuniform subsidy\u201d that disregards what kind of internet is available to northerners. If that\u2019s the preferred option, the GNWT recommended subsidies of $55 a month for residents and $80 a month for businesses.<\/p>\n

Initially, the GNWT had supported Starlink being included in the subsidy. However, the territory has had second thoughts since the Trump administration began its trade war.<\/p>\n

\u201cGNWT is supportive of a \u2018Team Canada\u2019 response to the economic threat posed by these US customs duties and other forms of intimidation, including implementing retaliatory trade and other measures,\u201d the territory wrote in its submission. <\/p>\n

That means the NWT would \u201cbe supportive of a CRTC decision to exclude US-owned ISPs from the receipt of the internet subsidy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northerners need a monthly internet subsidy to offset the cost of getting online, telecoms regulator the CRTC decided…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3161],"tags":[3082,53,11586,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-23196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-telecoms","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114344456751776122","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}