New Brunswick-based Xplore Inc. and SpaceX’s Canadian office have both been tapped for offers to provide satellite Internet service to 43,000 homes and businesses in Ontario. It’s part of program from the Government of Ontario that it says will see the province invest “nearly $4 billion to bring reliable high-speed internet access to every community across the province by the end of 2025.”Â
The companies were pre-selected in January following a request for proposals by Infrastructure Ontario. Xplore’s and SpaceX’s “technical, financial, and other requirements to deliver a program of this size and complexity” were some of the factors used in the decision, Infrastructure Ontario officials said in a release.
Officials from Infrastructure Ontario said in a statement emailed to SpaceQ that “the Government of Ontario is investing nearly $4 billion to bring reliable high-speed internet access to every community across the province by the end of 2025. Following an evaluation of the submitted request for qualifications (RFQ), Infrastructure Ontario (IO) selected the qualified Satellite ISPs. During the RFQ process, Satellite ISPs were qualified based on technical, financial, and other requirements for evaluation to feasibly deliver a program of this size and complexity.”
The added that “any region and municipality in Ontario where unserved and underserved homes and businesses without access to high-speed internet through ground-based solutions are expected to be covered by satellite internet service. A work schedule will be developed by the successful Satellite ISP.”
The companies are now in a new stage of the process that will require them to provide information “that details how they will feasibly deliver these programs” to the rural locations, the release states. A selection of the vendors’ options will be made in summer 2024.
The program is described as the first of its kind in Canada, allowing the businesses and homes to receive high-speed Internet access of 50 Mbps downloads and 10 Mbps uploads in locations absent from fibre optic or fixed wireless services. Ontario is working to make all communities accessible to high-speed Internet by 2025, although the timeline may need to be pushed back due to the inherent complexity of the process.
For this satellite solicitation, SpaceX would provide access through its Starlink satellite series, which has roughly 5,400 active satellites in orbit. Xplore’s satellite Internet is available through its Jupiter 3 Ultra High-Density satellite that launched – with SpaceX, incidentally – in July 2023, although Xplore also has ground options in communities able to support it.
High-speed broadband service is an election promise from Premier Doug Ford’s first campaign in 2018. At the time, the Progressive Conservatives pledged up to $100 million “to partner with providers in order to deliver cellular and broadband expansion across rural and northern Ontario.”
The money was supposed to come from “private sector participation in the expansion of natural gas across Ontario,” according to the same release. The increased Internet service, Ford stated, would allow rural Ontarians to remain in their communities with “better, more reliable connections; better opportunities to create and grow a business; and better options to find a good job.”
The $100 million has ended up being more than $4 billion, according to the latest government figures, that span a large spread of Internet projects. The SpaceX – Xplore project is meant to target the “hardest to reach areas of Ontario”, while other projects have different mandates. Telesat’s Lightspeed – a project funded by the Ontario, Quebec and Canadian governments – is focused on business, maritime and defense applications, for example. (Lightspeed is now expected to launch in 2026 following delays due to inflation, technical factors and the pandemic.)
Satellite Internet isn’t the only means by which Ontario aims to deliver broadband, with the province also working on fibre optic and other technologies. The Ontario government has also been introducing legislation meant to speed up the installation of broadband, most recently with the Less Red Tape, Stronger Economy Act, 2023.
The Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) welcomed the new legislation: “The Bill’s amendments ensure that broadband projects are better coordinated through provision of mapping data, and helps to ensure that project permits for work in rights-of-way are provided within required timelines,” AMO officials wrote in May 2023 following a presentation to the Standing Committee on Justice Policy on the legislation, then known as Bill 91.
While there is momentum for this Internet service for now, Ontario’s New Democratic Party raised concerns in 2019 that much of the broadband or satellite is being provided by private companies. “We know that a lot of those private companies weren’t investing in these areas simply because it wasn’t profitable for them to do so,” then-NDP MPP Laura Mae Lindo, who represented Kitchener Centre, told CBC following a major announcement that July concerning broadband in the Waterloo community.
As late as 2023, the NDP and northern municipal leaders raised additional concerns about Internet consultants not being fully familiar with the rugged geography of northern Ontario, according to the publication Northern Ontario Business – which can affect sightlines for Internet or expenses for installing it, among other factors. Aside from the geography, tiny populations can combine to make it difficult for companies to spend money on Internet in this area, they added, as there is not much return for the money spent.
The north of the province also continues to lag the rest of the country in terms of access to high-speed Internet, according to both Ontario Auditor General Karen Hogan and a report produced by non-profit technology development corporation Blue Sky Net, which is based in North Bay.
Hogan’s report, released in May 2023, found that roughly 91% of Ontario households in 2021 could get what they defined as “minimum connection speeds” of 50/10 Mbps. However, just 43% of Indigenous reserves had that access and less than 60% of rural and remote households met the threshold.
Blue Sky Net’s report later that year focused on 285 northern Ontario communities, tracking poor Internet access for most of them. They found that roughly a quarter (74) of the communities had at least 50% of the community’s households able to access the minimum connection speed. Only 47 of the surveyed communities had 75% of the households capable of accessing the minimum speed.