They do? I live in northern New England an hour so from the border and have some Canadian friends who complain that they have at best the same sort of mediocre 5-10/1-2 ADSL I did up until a year or two ago when fiber became available. They refer to their phone company as "the Jolly Roger" with all said connotations. Looking at this Canadian National Broadband Internet Service Availability Map seems to back that up too:
https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/sitt/bbmap/hm.html?lang=eng
Looks like even 50/10 let alone anything better has pretty minimal penetration, with a lot on really mediocre speeds providing wider areas. Even before sat<>sat optical, Starlink has potential to do a lot better for a lot more people. And once density gets good enough with sat<>sat links, Starlink may flat out offer better latency to remote parts of the world then existing connections thanks to the 40% speed benefit of c in a vaccum/air vs non-photonic bandgap fiber and a more point-to-point topology. That won't matter to everyone but it may be very valuable to certain remote workers.
People are often better at complaining than at remedying their situation.
Some years ago now I was at a friend's flat. He lamented that ASDL was poor. "They'll never offer anything better here" he said. I thought that was odd because I thought I'd seen a cabinet for his section of the district where we both live. So I suggested he check. He waved me off, no need to bother right because he's sure it isn't an option. So I typed his address into the checker and it said he could buy 80Mbps vDSL.
As a result of course he has 80Mbps vDSL. Now, if I'd just agreed "Yeah, it sucks" how long do you think he would have taken to realise he could buy faster service? A year? Five years? Maybe he'd still be moaning now on our Friday Jitsi call instead of complaining that the terrible webcam setup he cobbled together back in late March sucks?
Starlink definitely will be able to at least smooth out the current total patchwork. The question will just be if it's a low density area and (while constellation is building and before optical interlink sats) if it's in a covered zone. Won't always be the best option I'm sure, but it won't be the case that two people a mere half mile away as the crow flies with a small hill between them have to deal with total feast/famine differences.
And people have investigated because basically not having internet is something of a pain but it is what it is.
They wouldn't when they realise that it is a cheaper alternative to existing satellite internet services, not cable internet. Also that it would have reception issues in urban and suburban areas which is why they are targeting rural areas.
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The CRTC requires telephone and cable companies to sell access to their networks to independent Internet service providers (ISPs) at regulated wholesale prices.
Nowadays they just look at other plans and say, nope, you're on something better than anything we offer now.
FWIW Fizz is the new hotness here. They have worse coverage outside of metros, cheaper base plans, zero phone customer service (problem for negotiating cheaper deals I imagine), and rollover data, which Virgin does not.
I know Canada is a huge, sparsely populated country with many isolated, remote communities. But I'm astounded that "30 kilometres north of Toronto" is considered one of those locations so remote that you can't get fast, affordable internet service. So it seems like there are potentially a lot of "remote" Canadians.
> Elon Musk's SpaceX has applied to offer high-speed internet to Canadians living in remote areas by beaming it to them via satellites.