Welcome to the self-proclaimed Rural Ottawa High-Speed Internet Blog. High-speed Internet access is virtually ubiquitous in the urban and suburban areas of Ottawa, but when I started this blog in 2005, only about 60% of the rural areas of Ottawa have coverage. However, even for rural citizens, high-speed Internet access is becoming as necessary as telephone service. Happily, high-speed coverage for rural Ottawa has increased significantly, and not only is coverage reportedly above 90%, many rural residents and businesses now have more than one choice of high-speed ISP.

This purpose of this weblog is to track news and events related to high-speed (broadband) Internet access in the rural areas of Ottawa and, to a lesser extent, in nearby townships.

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Saturday, June 11, 2011

FP article: Rogers to roll out LTE network in Ottawa

The Financial Post recently publish an article reporting on Rogers' deployment of an LTE network in the Ottawa area. LTE -- Long-Term Evolution -- is next (4th) generation mobile voice and data, and promises to be 6-10x faster than current technologies. The LTE service is apparently available immediately.

I wandered over to Rogers website, and sure enough, the LTE Rocket Stick is being offered in the Ottawa area... with delivery sometime this summer. So it looks like the stick is available for pre-order.

The site doesn't get into performance specifics either, other than to say the service will be significantly faster than current HSPA+ networks (which have download speeds of up to 21 Mbps) and will depend on hardware selected.

LTE Rocket Stick hardware costs are $80 for 3-year contract, and $170 with no contract. No word on monthly service package costs.

Hopefully we can find out more later in the summer.

-Chris

posted by Chris Spencer at 8:36 am 3 comments

3 Comments:

Blogger Leif said...

Does LTE provide better coverage? i.e. in areas that previously had difficulty getting 3g service like homes within 3g range but protected by thick woods, etc.

June 11, 2011 10:21 am  
Blogger ian said...

Anyone have any idea if the bandwidth caps will be sufficient to handle video/netflix or other high bandwidth activity?

June 14, 2011 10:56 am  
Blogger Andreas said...

LTE is now live in the Ottawa area. The coverage is excellent and includes rural areas around the city. The speeds are astonishing... and so are the bandwidth caps.

Here's a good review of the service:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/07/07/our.rogers.lte.test.shows.fast.speeds/

Here is a coverage map:
http://www.rogerslte.com/lte-in-your-area

I couldn't find info on the Rogers website about the plans, but this article indicates "Service is based on a flex-rate strategy that costs a minimum $45 a month for 1.5GB of data and jumps to $60 for 3GB of data. Service peaks at $90 for 9GB of transfers and costs $10 for each gigabyte over the top tier."

http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/07/07/rogers.lte.starts.in.ottawa.first/

I haven't purchased it yet, but I probably will eventually. It would be good as a second connection when you really need the fast speeds.

July 10, 2011 7:58 am  

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