In my opinion Canada has not realized the value of the web, and the freedom we have in Canada currently.

I have decided to start a short series about Canada and its connection to the Internet and Technology. The first things I would like to touch on is our broadband connections, web hosting, the .ca domain name.

Disclaimer: everything here is just my opinion and experiences.

Broadband
I subscribe to a 3 meg broadband service through Rogers, and today at 4:30pm EST I did a test at dslreports.com and received a score of 1409 kbps down and 410 kbps up. In my opinion, that is not too bad, but it should probably be a bit better for the $50ish dollars a month that I pay. Rogers recently dropped their $10 surcharge for Internet users that don’t also subscribe to their television service, so thankfully I went from $60 a month for Internet access to $50 a month.

With Bell Sympatico, you can get a 1.5 meg line for the same price as my Rogers 3 meg line that probably performs about the same during peak hours, but the Rogers cable connection kicks Bell to the curb when it is not peak times of day.

Proportionally, twice as many Canadians have broadband than Americans, so we are really a broadband country and have been getting increased speed and services as the years go by.

Web Hosting
In comparison to the USA, or neighbours to the south, Canada’s web hosting providers are usually more expensive, unless the company has their servers in the States. I currently host with two American companies, avoiding the low bandwidth and horribly high prices of true Canadian hosting.

A comparison of hosting:
KOS Basic Package

  • Space: 100MB
  • Transfer: 5000MB
  • Price: $20.00 a month (Canadian)

Vortexhost Standard Plan

  • Space: 500MB
  • Transfer: 10,000MB
  • Price: $10.00 a month (USA)

Which one would you rather have? The $10 US a month plan, that converts to close to $15 a month, that gives you 5x the space and 2x the monthly transfer, or support the Canadian company as it takes all the money from your pocket? If you look deeper at the offerings of both companies you will see that Vortexhost just makes Kingston Online Services look horrible.

.ca Domain Name
Like most countries, Canada has their own top level domain. The .ca stands for Canada, and is supposed to be used for Canadian websites, but .com is just so much easier to remember and more professional to look at, so what you have is companies buying .ca’s and .com’s so that cyber-squatters don’t make a mess of things. Do Americans even use the .us extension?

Well that wraps up part one. I will probably go more in depth on each of these topics as the series continues, and will have more to say on Canada and its position on the web next time.