When it comes to an Internet connection, faster is always better

Telus billboard, Arbutus and Broadway, Vancouver, BC

Canada has a few problems with telecommunications service. The country is huge and the population is small. The majority of the population is concentrated in a few major centres hugging the US border. Canadians seem to enjoy travelling the huge distances between major centres and expect that they will be able to get the same mobile telephone service regardless of how far they are from the nearest town.

But in the big cities there services are pretty good. Internet speeds are certainly not up to South Korean standards, but on the whole they are tolerable.

The problem is that media consumption patterns have changed dramatically. No longer do we watch television on cable and send a few emails. Now a huge chunk of the population is watching Netflix and slowing down Internet service to a crawl.

While Internet service from Telus (the telephone company) is faster than that offered by Shaw (the cable TV provider), Telus' service is not available everywhere.

If I lived in Kits (a Vancouver neighbourhood), and didn't rely on conventional broadcast or cable TV for amusement, I'd be tempted to sign up and drop my TV service altogether.

The thing that frustrates me is that where I live lots of people have Telus fibre optic cable running right in front of their houses, but Telus won't offer faster fibre service. The fibre optic cable is there to provide fast service to more densely populated parts of the region. If I knew how to splice a fibre optic cable I might be tempted to try to tap in.