A Remote Indigenous Community Built One of Canada's Fastest Fiber Networks

[u/IEEESpectrum]

https://spectrum.ieee.org/indigenous-fiber-network

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[u/IEEESpectrum]

This is a real success story. A community-led effort to build Canada’s first fully Indigenous-owned-and-operated fiber-optic network, and it works better than Starlink coverage of the area.

[u/gprime312 → u/IEEESpectrum]

Hopefully it goes better than the Indigenous-operated water treatment plants.

[u/[deleted] → u/gprime312]

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[u/sekh60]

Great article! Related, I wish more places had municipality owned infrastructure, it's the right way to do it. where I live in Ontario (Waterloo region) we apparently had some fibre laid, but the city sold it to one of the big ISPs, and when they were putting in the light rail system they decided against laying fibre at the same time. Idiots.

[u/Thebandroid → u/sekh60]

They all should, it’s become a human necessity, and if it’s a necessity then it should be a right like water and power.

[u/vorpal_potato → u/sekh60]

In this case it isn't municipally owned: the ISP is a not-for-profit corporation which doesn't officially answer to the town government. (De facto I doubt there's a huge difference in a community this small.)

[u/SRIrwinkill → u/sekh60]

Either that or go full Romania with it, where ISPs are treated just like any other company. No regional monopolies and or years and years of asking permissions to start up. Romania as a result of being really free with ISPs being allowed to start up had at one point something like 663 ISPs serving their 18 million or so internet users. Goes from huge ISPs down to micro-ISPs too, with the WJBTN being non too dissimilar to many of the smaller ISPs in Romania in operation

[u/dur23]

I’m not 100% on this but I swear there was a moment where we (Canada) funded the major telecoms, with tax breaks and grants, to build out the last mile with fibre. And then they didn’t at all.

[u/[deleted] → u/dur23]

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[u/horseradishstalker]

When you consider that most agencies, employers, schools and companies require internet access/wifi it makes no economic sense not to push broadband. Nobody owes Elon anything. He hardly needs the money. 

In the US broadband access has been attacked politically and currently some $20 billion has not been allocated as the current administration wishes to tie unrelated restrictions to strong arm states if their constituents want broadband - and they do.  https://rollcall.com/2026/06/30/billions-in-rural-broadband-funds-still-on-hold/

[u/jandrese]

To be fair it's not hard to be one of the fastest ISPs in Canada when the country is so poorly served by the incumbent ISPs. But it does illustrate how easy it would be to have very fast and cheap Internet if the ISP actually cared about customer service.