The internet situation in Dawson City this summer is abysmal and I am spending a good chunk of my day apologizing for this and telling people to use our wi-fi for emails only. Guests are about as understanding as I was last summer, before I understood the internet situation in Yukon. It’s bad for business.
There is one internet provider in all of Yukon, Northwestel. There is also only one line linking Yukon to Outside. Finally, Northwestel is protected by Canada’s punitive-towards-the-customer competition laws. This means that Northwestel doesn’t have to upgrade the infrastructure, only has to provide as much bandwidth as it chooses, can throttle back users at will (even if the capacity for more is there), and can charge whatever it wants.
There was a big exposĂ© in the Whitehorse paper exposing Northwestel’s ‘throttle back’ policy. People are up and arms about this, but what can we do? I experienced the exact same thing when I was living in the Gatineau Hills, a mere 50km from the capital of Canada. The only internet accessible to me was a 28kbs dial up connection for which I paid the same as DSL and efforts made to improve service was blocked by the government. I really think that the only thing that could fix the telecommunications industry in Canada would be for folks to band together and provide their own service. That’s what happened in the Gatineau Hills, with a few people who had access to a DSL connection linking up via repeaters to provide a high speed wireless connection to as many people as possible.
All that to say, the internet situation is really affecting tourism this year. We can only have about 20 people on our wi-fi at one time before it crashes and we can only run a couple of hard-wired computers. There’s just not enough bandwidth to go around. Some long termers have run their own private lines, but they are also experiencing slow speeds and throttling.
In the midst of all this chaos are folks like me who are connecting to the internet via the cellular network and who have experienced a grand total of five hours without service this summer, decent speeds, and few drops. I’m starting to be embarrassed. đ
Telus and Bell internet sticks work here, and some Americans have had good luck with their Verizon aircards. I don’t know what it is about Verizon in that it seems to provide service for some and not others; perhaps it has something to do with their package. AT&T definitely does not work up here.
Since satellite has the same issues as DSL or cable internet, it seems that cellular is the way to go to get online in Dawson City. I’m a little worried that getting the word out will break the system!