ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW “It can be used anywhere in Canada, as long as you have an antenna to land in. It’s fungible,” she said. “You can configure it where you need it at any particular time. It’s an insurance that would allow you then to provide that continuity where you need it.” She highlighted another advantage of the technology when it comes to trying to prevent mass outages — individual satellites are spread out across a constellation. “You don’t have a big fat target in the sky,” said Beck. “You’ve got many, many satellites creating this network and if one or two gets taken out or denied, jammed, you still have hundreds more to complete the links.” In Northern Canada, where some remote communities have a history of connectivity challenges such as slow or unreliable speeds, high prices and data caps, many have pointed to satellites as a potential solution, said Rob McMahon, associate professor of media and technology at the University of Alberta. Speaking at the Ivey conference, McMahon shared research surrounding customer experiences from two communities in the Northwest Territories, which showed Starlink users tended to report fewer hiccups than customers of other broadband services. But McMahon noted limitations to the technology. Starlink, in particular, currently has a limited customer base — it became available in Canada in 2021 — and may see declines in speed or quality of service as uptake grows, he said. Consumer costs are also still relatively high, with the company charging $140 per month for service and $499 for hardware in Canada. “Reliability is somewhat unclear. There’s no local technicians to provide support if the service goes down, for example,” said McMahon. Arbour added satellite shouldn’t be seen as a full substitute for 4G or 5G communications. He said the departmenthas received complaints about “dead zones” where satellite internet doesn’t seem to work, even in centralized locations. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW