Industry Canada has released the results of their crowd-sourced broadband mapping project.
The project was set up by the government last month to find areas of Canada that were underserved by broadband (Defined as 1.5MBps connections or faster.)
Frankly, the results aren't pretty. Below, I've cut out a piece of the southern and central Ontario map (coloured areas are bad, especially red and purple ones.)
As you can see, major cities are fine, but once you get out in rural or just smaller municipalities, you start seeing a lot of dead areas with no high-speed Internet access at all.
That said, there is hope.
The crowd-sourced mapping project was done as part of Canada's Economic Action plan, in which Industry Canada is to spend $225 million over three years to extend broadband to underserved areas.
The posted maps represent only the first phase of the plan. There will be a call for submissions sometime at the end of the summer.
See the National Broadband Maps on the Industry Canada web site
Robert Janelle
Robert Janelle is a freelance technology journalist living in the National Capital Region. He's spent time covering the Ottawa start-up scene as a columnist and feature writer with his work in National Capital Scan, The Ottawa Citizen, The Ottawa Sun, Kingston Whig-Standard and The Escapist. He also suffers from a mild addiction to video games.
