I was interested to see last week that Ontario followed Quebec and Nova Scotia in announcing a publicly funded high speed internet program for 15,000 underserved and unserved homes in rural, remote and northern communities beginning June of 2025. Ontario announced the program with some fanfare and media coverage. It is unclear whether all of the homes are in indigenous communities or just some of them, but there is specific provision made in the announcement for indigenous communities. This is a very good thing.
However, I had a few questions about the $100M price tag. After a competitive process, the Minister of Infrastructure Ontario announced that Starlink was the successful bidder. In exchange for $100M, Starlink would ship its Starlink Kits which are necessary to use the Starlink internet service, to eligible households. That is what, it would seem, the Ontario taxpayer agreed to and funded. That struck me as odd because anyone can order and have delivered the Starlink Kit from Starlink's web site for $500 assuming they could do so from a location that had internet access.
Doing the math it seems, and the Ontario government spokesperson confirms, that $7.5M of the $100M is being used to purchase and deliver the receiver Kits. So far so good, and I am already willing to round up to $10M for this to account for extra transportation costs associated with rural and remote locations. With that in mind then what was the other $90-$92.5M going to be used for? Well, there didn't seem to be any well articulated answers. Digging through what was publicly available, it was evident that Starlink had agreed to ensure equal access for Indigenous communities and commit to some unspecified employment and other social development opportunities. Was this where the residual $90-$92.5M of taxpayer funds were going? Maybe but no one from Infrastructure Ontario seemed to be saying so.
Alas, an Infrastructure Ontario spokesperson weighed in explaining that the province is paying $92M to "reserve capacity" on Starlink for these 15,000 new customers. That struck me as odd as to my knowledge none of the other 400,000 plus Canadian subscribers of Starlink prior to this announcement, had paid specifically to "reserve capacity" on the Starlink network beyond their monthly subscription fees which these new 15,000 customers will pay as well.
If any of this is to believed, the 15,000 new customers under this program will access the Starlink network with some sort of service level guarantee that guarantees them access no matter what the global demand on Starlink's network is. Are the other 400,000 out of luck in that event then? Are customers in Quebec and Nova Scotia under their programs out of luck?I think that Infrastructure Ontario needs to be a lot clearer about why it paid this extra $92M and for what?
To put this in context Starlink reported that it had surpassed 4 million customers across 100 countries in September. I am not aware that any of them are paying to reserve capacity. Is Ontario making a payment to offset additional satellites. That doesn't make any sense for 15,000 potential households dispersed across the entirety of the province. Assuming that is the explanation then we should ask why?
According to Starlink, it launches approximately 40 new satellites each week. At the time of writing, there are over 6700 of them forming a constellation orbiting the Earth at 17,000 mph, or once around the planet every 90 minutes or so. To my knowledge, no residential or small business subscriber has been asked to pay to reserve capacity on the service other than through their C$140/month subscription fee. Why are Ontarians paying to reserve capacity for these specific 15,000 customers?
If someone goes on the Starlink web site and is prompted to pay $6,000 for capacity reservation in addition to their monthly subscription fee and Starlink receiver Kit please let me know.