Eastlink Inc. is a Canadian
cable television and
telecommunications company. The privately held company was founded in
Nova Scotia in 1969 by the Bragg family, and has grown since through the amalgamation of several telecommunications companies.
History
The company began in
Amherst, Nova Scotia
Amherst ( ) is a town in northwestern Nova Scotia, Canada, located at the northeast end of the Cumberland Basin, an arm of the Bay of Fundy, and south of the Northumberland Strait. The town sits on a height of land at the eastern boundary of th ...
, in 1969,
where it was later issued one of the first cable licences granted by the
CRTC. It acquired Halifax Cablevision Ltd., at the time the largest system in Eastern Canada, in 1985.
Through a series of acquisitions, which included the purchase of
Amtelecom,
Persona,
Bluewater,
Delta and
Coast Cable
Eastlink Inc. is a Canadian cable television and telecommunications company. The privately held company was founded in Nova Scotia in 1969 by the Bragg family, and has grown since through the amalgamation of several telecommunications companies ...
, Eastlink became the fifth-largest cable television provider in Canada by 2010, with approximately 1,500 employees working in offices across the country. As of 2010, it was the largest privately owned cable company in Canada, with 457,075 subscribers in nine provinces (excluding
Saskatchewan). It remains privately held by the
Bragg family of
Oxford, Nova Scotia.
In 2008, Eastlink purchased the wireline business of ISN,
Prince Edward Island's only local internet service provider. As of 2020, ISN re-entered the wireline business with a home and business fibre service.
Criticism
In 2015, Eastlink came under fire for introducing data caps of 15 GB/month for broadband customers. Critics argued that the amount of data was considered unusually low for residential internet.
In 2017, Eastlink decided to revoke the email address of a customer who had been using it since 1998 because they concluded it was misleading and could be confused with an Eastlink service. Eastlink gave the customer 30 days notice to "go through 20 years worth of email".
Service offerings
Cable Internet and TV
Eastlink delivers digital video/television and cable-network-based Internet services with speeds up to 940 megabits per second, one of the faster networks of this kind in North America. It was one of the first companies in North America to
bundle digital cable
Digital cable is the distribution of cable television using digital data and video compression. The technology was first developed by General Instrument. By 2000, most cable companies offered digital features, eventually replacing their previou ...
and
broadband Internet
In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
services with
home phone service.
Eastlink's 350 and 940 megabit service have unlimited usage, both while standalone and while included in a bundle.
Eastlink also produces
community channels branded as
Eastlink TV to serve the company's cable customers.
Eastlink offers
video on demand,
digital video recorders and high definition television (
HDTV) services in many communities across Canada.
Wireless
Eastlink spent $25 million during the 2008
Advanced Wireless Services auction for 19 licenses in
Ontario and
Atlantic Canada
Atlantic Canada, also called the Atlantic provinces (french: provinces de l'Atlantique), is the region of Eastern Canada comprising the provinces located on the Atlantic coast, excluding Quebec. The four provinces are New Brunswick, Newfoundlan ...
as well as
Grande Prairie,
Alberta. The company announced in 2011 that it would introduce wireless services, beginning with
Nova Scotia and
Prince Edward Island. In February 2013, Eastlink launched its wireless service with evolved high speed packet access (HSPA+) and long-term evolution (LTE) services available at the launch date.
As Eastlink deployed many wireless repeater towers for its
Motorola Canopy service launched as part of the
Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia initiative, upgrading these to serve as a cellular and Wi-Fi
mesh network
A mesh network is a local area network topology in which the infrastructure nodes (i.e. bridges, switches, and other infrastructure devices) connect directly, dynamically and non-hierarchically to as many other nodes as possible and cooperate wit ...
with the intent of attracting third parties with no tower access, such as Wind, to partner with Eastlink.
In May 2016, Eastlink announced that it would launch wireless service in the cities of
Timmins and
Sudbury Sudbury may refer to:
Places Australia
* Sudbury Reef, Queensland
Canada
* Greater Sudbury, Ontario (official name; the city continues to be known simply as Sudbury for most purposes)
** Sudbury (electoral district), one of the city's federal e ...
in northern Ontario. Eastlink activated its
LTE
LTE may refer to:
Science and technology
* LTE (telecommunication) (Long-Term Evolution), a telephone and mobile broadband standard
** LTE Advanced, an enhancement
*** LTE Advanced Pro
* Compaq LTE, a line of laptop computers produced by Compaq
* ...
network, including
Voice over LTE, in Timmins on June 1, 2016 with the LTE network in Sudbury activated on June 9, 2016.
In March 2022, Eastlink launched a
5G network in partnership with
Ericsson. Right now the new 5G network is live in parts of the
Halifax Regional Municipality and
St.John, New Brunswick.
CLEC services
Eastlink was the first major
Canadian cable company to offer competitive local
telephone service in its territory in 1999 over a
fibre optic
An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...
network. In 2005 the
area code 902 telephone market was the most competitive telephone exchange in
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
and this was credited to Eastlink's presence in the market. Eastlink was also the first provider to deliver local telephone competition to its service area in
New Brunswick in 2005.
Fixed wireless Internet in rural Nova Scotia
In 2010, Eastlink launched another service in cooperation with other providers and the government of
Nova Scotia's
Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia initiative: a
Motorola Canopy-based rural Internet service capable of 0.5 megabit uploads, 1.5 megabit downloads, which was intended to reach "100% of civic addresses" in Nova Scotia. This level of coverage is unique in North America and is a particular challenge in a province prone to extreme weather, fog, and winds. Eastlink claimed at public forums in early 2010 that the service would operate at under 100ms latency and accordingly be useful for
VoIP from arbitrary third parties such as
Skype, but this has not been verified. However, latency to the towers themselves was reliably under 2ms at that time.
Alternatives
Critics of the Canopy service, notably Bell, argued that it is expensive (due to shorter range repeater towers). The strategy was poorly coordinated with cable networks (there being for instance no subsidy to extend the cable network where it would be easy to do so or even where it would facilitate the wireless services). Most open-systems-minded users considered Canopy an impractical direction compared to expansion of
Wi-Fi hotspot services. Its primary competitor,
Aliant
Bell Aliant is a brand name used by Bell Canada for telecommunications services in Atlantic Canada.
Prior to 2015, Bell Aliant Inc. (formerly Aliant Inc.) was a separate company providing telecom services in the Atlantic provinces and a few ot ...
, by contrast has invested in Wi-Fi,
GSM and
DSL services, but they remained as of 2011 expensive or unavailable in rural Nova Scotia.
Some jurisdictions that report unsatisfactory results with all of these technologies, including Canopy, such as
Door County, Wisconsin's
Washington Island, have reported positive results with
powerline networking. However, as power-lines do not reach "100% of civic addresses" they do not address quite the same issues. The deployment of powerline-based meters by
Emera subsidiary
Bangor Hydro, which also owns
Nova Scotia Power Inc.
Nova Scotia Power Inc. is a vertically integrated electric utility in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is privately owned by Emera and regulated by the provincial government via the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board (NSUARB). Nova Scotia Power Inc p ...
on the board of which Eastlink CEO
Lee Bragg
Lee may refer to:
Name
Given name
* Lee (given name), a given name in English
Surname
* Chinese surnames romanized as Li or Lee:
** Li (surname 李) or Lee (Hanzi ), a common Chinese surname
** Li (surname 利) or Lee (Hanzi ), a Chinese ...
serves, suggests that this technology may ultimately become part of the Eastlink mix in some rural areas.
As of early 2011,
Rogers,
Aliant
Bell Aliant is a brand name used by Bell Canada for telecommunications services in Atlantic Canada.
Prior to 2015, Bell Aliant Inc. (formerly Aliant Inc.) was a separate company providing telecom services in the Atlantic provinces and a few ot ...
, and
Telus' mobile Internet offerings are extraordinarily expensive for heavy users and
tethering of personal computers is not necessarily included under these plans; the price per gigabyte of the Eastlink service is clearly superior to any of these offerings. However, the maximum speed is much less (1.5Mbit/s download versus up to 21Mbit/s) and more so when these cellular providers upgrade to dual-carrier (42Mbit/s)
HSPA+
Evolved High Speed Packet Access, HSPA+, HSPA (Plus) or HSPAP, is a technical standard for wireless broadband telecommunication. It is the second phase of HSPA which has been introduced in 3GPP release 7 and being further improved in later 3GPP ...
. For those more concerned with speed and less with price, cellular options will be a superior rural networking choice; for those concerned with price, Eastlink's fixed wireless service, the expansion of Wi-Fi hotspots, and the use of
802.11u IEEE 802.11u-2011 is an amendment to the IEEE 802.11-2007 standard to add features that improve interworking with external networks.
802.11 is a family of IEEE technical standards for mobile communication devices such as laptop computers or multi-m ...
and
802.21 The IEEE 802.21 refers to Media Independent Handoff (MIH) and is an IEEE standard published in 2008. The standard supports algorithms enabling seamless handover between wired and wireless networks of the same type as well as handover between differe ...
will continue to form a more reliable mesh especially in attracting tourists or in densely populated areas.
Wired Network Extensions
In terms of speed, where it could reach groups of customers inaccessible by Canopy, Eastlink's wired network would be substantially faster, operating at up to 100Mbit/s download, compared to 1.5Mbit/s download. Fixed-wireless internet is, however, many times faster than dial-up (1.5Mbit/s) and does (unlike satellite) satisfy most expectations of "
broadband Internet access
Internet access is the ability of individuals and organizations to connect to the Internet using computer terminals, computers, and other devices; and to access services such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is sold by Internet ...
". Broadband is economically or subjectively defined and is perceived very differently by persons with different latency expectations and service usage patterns, therefore perceptions of its quality are also subjective; Persons accustomed to dialup service may be thrilled with Canopy performance, whereas those used to wired cable find it slow or flaky.
Canopy service deployment encountered numerous challenges in practice, including installation of unforeseen wireless relay towers installed on an ''ad hoc'' basis that increase latency, reduce service reliability and load other towers – the inherent problems of a
mesh network
A mesh network is a local area network topology in which the infrastructure nodes (i.e. bridges, switches, and other infrastructure devices) connect directly, dynamically and non-hierarchically to as many other nodes as possible and cooperate wit ...
.
Service and installation concerns
Eastlink was not, as of November 2011, effectively held to its contractual obligation to provide "100% of civic addresses" with service nor its latency promises, even where most such customers could be easily accommodated by extending its wired network to these existing wireless relay towers. In particular, users on islands with water access were denied service as of summer 2011.
Installers as of November 2011 had no way to test latency before asking for customer sign-off and final installation, meaning that any user whose latency needs could not be met would not know that until after they had agreed the service was adequate, based only on raw signal strength.
As of late 2011, the project had still not yet reached its promise of "100% of civic addresses." Eastlink has not commented on the consistency of speeds or latency on this network nor released any public
quality of service (QoS) statistics or actual usage information about the services its users actually use. It was widely anticipated that Eastlink would offer access to its new cell network in 2012 on favourable terms to cut-off rural users.
Coverage
Provinces which currently have some Eastlink service are: Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick (limited to southern regions), Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia. It also previously served the town of
Point Roberts, Washington, in the
United States, a geographic exclave of Washington which is accessible by land only from British Columbia; EastLink announced it would discontinue service to Point Roberts in 2019, citing the cost of maintaining the aging cable infrastructure in the town.
Service in Saskatchewan was available in the past but is currently not available to new customers.
Access Communications in Saskatchewan acquired the rights to the cable TV services in the areas formerly covered by Eastlink.
Although the company has mostly unified its acquisitions under the Eastlink brand, in parts of British Columbia, Eastlink operates as Coast Cable in the
Sunshine Coast Sunshine Coast may refer to:
* Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia
**Sunshine Coast Region, a local government area of Queensland named after the region
**Sunshine Coast Stadium
* Sunshine Coast (British Columbia), geographic subregion of the Br ...
and as Delta Cable in
Delta, British Columbia. Based on the redirection of users to Eastlink's website for both Coast Cable and Delta Cable, these brands are being phased out to unify these divisions under Eastlink.
As of February 2011, Eastlink has acquired service territory on the island of
Bermuda.
Cellular service is currently available to residents all of Nova Scotia; all of Prince Edward Island; south New Brunswick; Saint John, Fredericton, Moncton, Sussex, Sackville; St. John's, NL; Ontario; Greater Sudbury, ON; and Timmins, ON.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eastlink (Company)
Cable and DBS companies of Canada
Telecommunications companies of Canada
Internet service providers of Canada
Internet service providers of the United States
Companies based in Halifax, Nova Scotia
Telecommunications companies established in 1969
1969 establishments in Nova Scotia