The real deal is not who didn’t get hi-speed but that the service is half speed

PEI hi-speed with Aliant is low speed

The Eastern Graphic is reporting didn’t get hi-speed “Clients fume over Aliant’s Internet boast”.

The grim reality is that even the people who got a service upgrade didn’t get hi-speed internet. For that you need new data lines, usually fibre optics. EastLink has high-speed fibre optic lines that run 15 Mbps (megabits per second). The more Mbps your connection has the faster you will be able to get pages from the internet, watch videos and listen to music.

Aliant just upgraded their switches and amplifiers over copper lines. The signal can’t even come close to East Link’s service. Sure it is better than dial up what what isn’t?

Aliant is using copper from the local CO (central office or outdoor DSL unit). Much of it is old copper to boot. DSL signal declines as distance increases. Top “Ultra” speed is 7 Mbps but you have to be pretty close to the CO to get it. The core service is “up to” 1.5 megabits per second but people max around 1.4 if they are any distance out.

EastLink uses fibre optic except for the final delivery to your house, which I think is still over co-ax vs twisted pair for the DSL. EastLink go to 15 Mbps but could fairly easily increase. We started out at 10 Mbps and they just bumped us up. When you have fibre speed on the line is not the question.

I just checked my line in the middle of the afternoon and got 14.1 Mbps downloading and 931 Mbps uploading. Cable hi-speed assumes customers are downloading data. If you want to run a server from home, you might want to get someone to host.

With copper lines, like Aliant has, getting speed is a trick of magic, like balancing a pyramid on your nose. Sooner or later, it’s bound to fall.

Basically Ghiz bought 19th century technology from his (or Rory’s) buddies at Aliant. NB did the same some years ago and have recently put out a big contract to BarrettXplorenet to complete the 10% of homes Aliant admit they failed to reach.

Welcome to the 19th century on PEI.

When he was at ACOA (with a director general of “innovation” he had seconded from Aliant) Rory Beck for years blocked proposals to upgrade Island internet infrastructure – something which could have been done and given us a competitive advantage a decade ago.

Aliant have privately admitted their strategy of IT innovation is “Own or Block”

Of course, Ghiz and the boys haven’t got a clue so they walked right into the arms of Aliant who is otherwise known as Bell Canada.