As 2025 winds down, it’s become clear that the Ontario government’s plan to connect everyone in the province to high-speed internet won’t be fulfilled, and now it seems like that deadline is being pushed back to 2028.
This plan wasn’t always destined to fail, though. Until the trade war with the U.S. (and Elon Musk) earlier this year, the Ontario government had a $100 million plan with Starlink to help bring high-speed internet to people living in remote areas. However, it was one of the first things that the Ford government cut in a shot at Musk and his close ties with President Donald Trump.
Without Starlink in the picture, things look more bleak for rural Ontarians, who will now need to either sign up for an unsubsidized version of Starlink or try to find another way to get online. However, this plan seems to hinge on the bad blood between Canada and the U.S. to subside, or for a competitor to Starlink to appear.
There are other companies working on satellite internet in the same way, such as Amazon’s Project Kuiper, Eutelsat OneWeb, and in Canada, there is a company called Telesat working on it. However, none of these are currently working at the scale of Starlink, and Telesat is still years away from a viable product.
The Canadian satellite competitor still plans to start launching its low-earth orbit satellites by the end of 2026 and has recently purchased land near Timmins, Ontario, to create a landing station. However, it should be noted that this timeline has been pushed back, and on the November 4th earnings call, the company said it would likely launch test satellites in December 2026. The bulk of the launches will occur in 2027, enabling the service to be delivered to customers, which may even line up with Ontario’s new deadline.
Source: Telesat, Global News
Image source: Shutterstock
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