Complaints about broadband
(high-speed Internet) in the Algoma District area have quieted down
considerably over the past year. I attribute this mainly to the activation of the
Deferral Account services have come on line under the marketing name Bell
Wireless Internet 5.
As far as I can tell, there are
about 300 subscribers to the service spread over the five areas covered by the program.
As to the service itself, all
indications are that the Deferral Account network can handle the load. I have only
heard one or two complaints about dropped connections and speed degradation but
they are rare. I am glad to see that even with the growth in the number
of users, the Deferral Account service is consistently delivering downloads and
uploads that is in excess of the CRTC/Industry Canada 2017 target of 5/1 Mbps.
I have had to remind some people
that they should do a data hub/router/modem reboot on a regular basis to clear
out the "corporate memory" that is built up over time as this can
negatively affect speed. I recommend every two weeks. It could
require action more often depending on use. This action appears to
resolves speed and connectivity problems people have contacted me about. Recent
third party studies have found that poor wireless LAN performance and congestion
at major Internet peering points can be a major cause of slow network speed.
The major draw back to the Deferral
Account (BWI 5) service is the data cap. Latest statistics show a huge
increase in the average webpage size in the past 5 years:
Nov 2010 = 626 KB;
May 2012 = 828 KB;
May 2013 = 1246
KB;
Nov 2014 = 1935
KB.
One can attribute much of this
increase to growth in the use of images and video. Video's contribution to the
data cap overload is insidious as in many cases website "designers" are
causing videos to start automatically upon page download. In addition, it is common
practise for the video to default to the data hungry HD standard. I have
carried out various local tests that indicate it is possible to reduce a
daily data usage in the multi-GB range by controlling the display of video. In
many news and technical sites that I access, the sound track from the HD video
is almost identical to the written story on the webpage. You can get the information
without huge hit to the data cap.
This means that routine web browsing
can cause a significant hit to data caps. Of course, the other major hit to the
data caps is the growth on popularity of the streaming video services such as
Netflix, Crave and Showmi. User numbers for all three streaming services
continue to grow in an almost exponential manner.
The use of cloud-based services
can also cause a user to burn through a data cap quickly.
Overall, Deferral Account (BWI5)
users have to monitor their data usage.
Many of these challenges do not exist for users with terrestrial connectivity with the availability of large or unlimited data caps.
