Weekly insights on the tech and infrastructure powering our connected world
Telco, Broadband, Data Centres, Space and AI

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Broadband / Telco

🇨🇦 The Best Gaming ISPs for 2026: Canada - When it comes to online gaming, a fast connection isn’t enough—quality matters, too. We crunched a year’s worth of data to find the best ISP for gamers in every Canadian province. Is your provider on our winner's list, or is it time to switch?

My Take: I continue to think these lists are a waste of time. What am I going to do, move to an area serviced by the “winner” to play games? Anyway, what it does address is latency, and I’ll suggest reliability as well. They “measure connection quality by calculating the median latency and jitter scores earned by an ISP and then combining them to obtain a quality index.”

Virtual Reality Opens Doors for Older People to Build Closer Connections in Real Life - Residents of senior living communities can return to their days of wanderlust and thrill-seeking with virtual reality headsets.

My Take: VR is starting to do something real for older adults, not just games, but actual social connection. When you can feel like you’re sitting in the same room or exploring a place with someone far away, it changes the quality of life.

High End Router Market Grew 23 Percent in 3Q 2025, According to Dell’Oro Group - According to a recently published report by Dell’Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the telecommunications, security, networks, and data center industries, High End Router equipment revenue grew 23 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2025, with Core Routers staging a strong comeback, growing 68 percent in that period.

My Take: The cycle continues. New builds. Refresh cycles. Those core routers stay in place for a long time.

🇨🇦 Why Ontario’s $200 Billion Infrastructure Project Depends On Mapping Everything - Growth is expected beyond Toronto, across the Canadian province of Ontario. The whole region will grow by nearly 25 percent to 20 million in 2040, and the province is investing more than $200 billion in critical infrastructure over the next 10 years. That includes expanding public transportation, building more hospitals, schools, child-care, long-term care homes, and broadening the reach of high-speed internet and electric vehicle charging.

My Take: As they say, it’s only as good as the data. Digital Twins will help, for sure, but if all the information isn’t available or shared, then there’s always a piece missing, and water lines will continue to suffer the business end of a drill. With any new builds, there are also opportunities to add advanced warning and monitoring solutions using distributed fiber optic sensing, providing the infrastructure's “nervous system.”

NTIA Highlights Maine, Hawaii LEO Deployments Ahead of BEAD - The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is optimistic about the role of low-earth orbit satellites in its flagship broadband grant program. The agency recently highlighted two state broadband officials that said early, smaller-scale deployments in their states are going well. 

My Take: It’s not like Elon doesn’t have 9,000,000 other subscribers. Of course, it works and is a viable solution where it makes sense. As long as China and Russia don’t do something untoward (see below), all will be well.

🇨🇦 How Streaming Is Replacing Cable TV (UK & Canada) - For decades, cable TV was the default way people watched television. If you wanted live channels, sports, or movies at home, cable was the only real option. But today, that model is changing fast. Across the UK and Canada, more households are cutting the cord and switching to streaming-based TV instead.

My Take: If course they are, and I don’t know why I haven’t fully made the switch yet. I think there are three channels that I record content from - out of the 600 that I have, or whatever. Everything else is on some platform. So much garbage out there.. not including Below Deck (all of them) and Justic Judy, of course.

🇨🇦 CRTC chair keeps a firm hand on the regulator after a demanding year - Ask Vicky Eatrides, the chair of Canada’s telecommunications, internet and broadcasting regulator, what kind of political pressure she faces, and her answer is simple: “none.” It’s perhaps the answer you would expect for a career lawyer and bureaucrat running an independent quasi-judicial tribunal, which makes decisions based on the public record and in the public interest, not on Ottawa’s say-so.

My Take: I would definitely agree with collegial and would add less stuffy. In any case, I believe the article suggests that while they may be communicating differently, the CRTC’s core behaviour hasn’t shifted in ways that materially change Canada’s telecom landscape.

Licensed vs. unlicensed spectrum: Key differences - Licensed spectrum is reliable and has better performance than unlicensed, which is low cost, easy to deploy and subject to interference. Lightly licensed spectrum offers a balance.

My Take: I think that’s all you really need to know! Unlicensed is also ‘free.’ Licensed = exclusive, reliable, expensive. Unlicensed = shared, cheap, and sometimes messy. I know some people who could be considered unlicensed. 😁

🇨🇦 Last call for the landline. The wired communication world will soon be no more - Whenever I see an old, decommissioned pay phone or, even more rarely, a rotary dial phone, I’m transported to a time when the landline telephone played a major role in all our lives. I was an early adopter. So enamoured with this marvel of communication was I that for my third birthday, I asked for and received a toy version of our family’s rotary dial phone. Later, I gladly risked a tongue-lashing for the opportunity to listen in on other people’s conversations on my grandparents’ party line, their ancient wooden wall telephone a portal to the daily gossip in their rural Manitoba community.

My Take: Copper is old, doesn’t support any new ‘features’ and is expensive to maintain. Digital voice services rely on broadband and electricity, unlike traditional landlines, which can still work during power outages — like during an ice storm that knocks power out for 12 days, or when the zombies attack and take out the power..

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