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Brin
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-01-21 04:38 am (UTC)---
Interestingly, in my experience the United States is *closer* to the universal-Internet ideal than Canada is: more places have Wi-Fi (mid-low tier Canadian grocery stores do *not* have Wi-Fi, and banks are still in the process of adding it), mobile data plans are cheaper†, and free (but throttled) overage data is standard.
(Don't be fooled by the fact that I was able to find *a* Canadian supplier that does free-but-throttled: only two out of the ~10 (depending on how you count) do it. Note that Freedom Mobile has incredibly narrow geographical zoning, so I always ignore it when doing Canadian phone comparisons. (Every time I hear a Freedom Mobile ad while outside of their zone, broadcast from a radio tower that is *also* outside of their zone, I hate them a little more. I have heard many such ads.))
---
I suspect that any satellites that got off the ground (so to speak) could do so only by agreeing to restrict themselves to serving poorer countries, kind of like with Wikipedia Zero. (though lack of mobile *Wikipedia* is among the easier lacks to deal with because you can just download the entire thing in advance; which I guess means it *would* be more reasonable for Wikipedia Zero to focus on poorer countries than it would for general-Internet, since mobile Wikipedia is only really necessary if you *never* have a good Internet connection or if you can't afford a microSD card)
((okay admittedly I'm running an outdated and imageless version of the Wikipedia download on my phone because of not having a good enough microSD card for a better version, but I ""can't afford a better microSD card"" only in the same way I ""can't afford a phone plan"" and the potential-future versions of those people on Tumblr ""can't afford a plane seat""))
---
Given that the Canadian government's idea of expanding access to basic information utilities is requiring that TV providers offer a $25/month package, I kind of suspect that if tasked with the problem of mobile data they'd look at Public Mobile or maybe Chatr and go "yep, problem already solved, maybe require other providers to offer this sort of thing too but this is the right general idea".
I think about getting a Public Mobile plan sometimes, but I've used pay-per-use phones a lot over the years--back before Public Mobile had a price tier that low and the pay-per-use [$100/year]-minimum-credit-purchase providers were the cheapest around--and I know what horrible things pay-per-use does to your psyche if you are the type to agonise over plane seats. I'm still in the process of training myself out of the habits of cost-benefit-analysing every use of a phone before I start pressing the buttons (and sometimes coming to an analysis conclusion of "no, not worth it"), and of trying to stuff everything I want to write to someone into as few texts as possible, and of resenting everyone who causes me to need to use a phone. (as I put it when talking to someone else about this previously, there is no hatred quite like the hatred you feel for someone who is making you pay 20c/minute to be on hold)
(As for Chatr, $35/month every month indefinitely *might* be verging into "genuinely cannot afford that" territory. I really need to do the end-of-year accounting to see if we're in the red again this year or not, and what magnitude the profit/loss is.)
---
It occurs to me that at first glance [the thing about not being able to bring yourself to buy things if you can technically get away with it, and how this leads to bad things] and [the desire to make high-speed Internet more firmly something that you can technically get away with not buying] seem to conflict, but in practice I suspect even the people with the psychological issues would mostly still buy Internet subscriptions (assuming they did previously). There are many things you straight-up can't do on a slow connection, and being able to stream video (let alone doing other high-bandwidth stuff) is very important to a lot of people. If anything I'm likely to *under*estimate how much people care about video (and for that matter likely to overestimate how much people care about how much their data costs)).
(If you attempt to get from point A to point B by using a standing-room-only plane, you will succeed but with a more uncomfortable experience. If you try to hang out with a friend over Twitch by using an overaged mobile-data plan, you will fail.)
---
†Though not by as *much* as the people complaining about oligopoly would have you believe: I suspect they're comparing apples to oranges, looking at Canadian brands-that-compete-on-name-recognition and American brands-that-compete-on-price, even though both countries have both brand types. Sure, Rogers will overcharge the shit out of you if you buy directly from them, but so will Verizon.