Tonight Bruce Howatt of Aliant was on CBC Compass reporting in on Aliant's goal to bring high speed internet to all Islanders. Bruce reported that they are 30% completed (5,000 households are able to connect to DSL, out of 25,000). Bruce also reported they are on schedule. He said they expect prices to be between $29.95 to $49.95 a month and Aliant is expecting the project to cost $8.2 million.

If all of those 5,000 people connected then that would be additional revenue for Aliant of $149,750. If the 25,000 people connected then it would be additional revenue of $748,750 or $8.9 million for the first year! And that's at the special introductory offer of $29.95 which is only valid for a year. That's a nice return for Aliant.

What was not discussed was how fast the service will be but I give the Sarah? credit as she didn't let Bruce off easily when asking about pricing.

I wish the province made Aliant agree to give Islanders on social assistance a nice discount before they funded this program.

Did Sarah grill him on Eastlink's exclusion? So only 25,000 need DSL? 30% of 25000 is 7500, not 5000. Nice math, Bruce. Makes me feel real confident. Right now I'm using Route2, a service of City of Summerside. Pretty good service for a wireless, city-owned and managed utility. Am anxious to get real DSL.

Anyone catch the phone number that was displayed during the segment? It appeared and disappeared too fast for me to write down. I'd watch the segment again from the CBC website...but I need DSL for that so that's kind of a paradox :P

Also about the flawed math, I seem to remember Bruce saying 5,000 are connected and 25,000 are still to go...meaning 5,000 in 30,000 total, or 17%, have been hooked up.

Nathan...the reason the number was quickly displayed without time to write it down, is because they DONT want anyone calling them. Who has time to sit through all their prompts anyway and be told "your call is important to us" when in fact, it's not!!!

Hey Folks, I have been waiting years it seems for high speed here in Belfast PEI. My wife finally got through to someone in Nova Scotia the other day that told her we would never be getting high speed here because it just didn't make good business sense. I have since heard that what we were promised was that would be "virtually" everyone that would be getting high speed. I live near Ben's Lake, any comment? Will we ever get high spedd through aliant? Brett

Brett: I have a friend that lives down around you who just got Aliant HSI within the past few weeks, so you'll be probably getting it soon.

Hi John, Thanks for getting back to so quickly. I got a message from Mr. Lambe(?) today saying Aliant would have a press release by next week end. I try not to let my past experience make me too cynical. Here is hoping we will finally get connected.
Cheers

ya well listen to this one, i live in pleasant view ,which is up west , mimingash had high speed for over 4 years now which is 2 min up the road from me, an 2 min up the road the other way palmer road had it since last year , an every time some one calls in my village they say something different the last time someone called they said we will be never getting , so could some on please explain this to me???? thanks it would be greatly appericated!

I have aliant highspeed in O'Leary about 100 feet (yes feet) from the tower or the DSLAM for those technically inclined that is the big box that distributed the Internet over phone line and the further you are from it your speed reduces exponentially I am getting redicuously slow speed and to be that close to the tower is scandulous and everytime u call they do a so called test on the line and say everything is fine Yea everything is fine allright all that proves is there is a connection between there office and my line. And on top of that the price is over 40 a month and rising every year. Gotta love pei and aliant err I mean bell aliant ever since they merged will bell there a buch of corporate a$$holes. Gotta love paying for a service that doesn't deliver what it promises.take it from me people your waiting for a service that isn't Going to be much better than what you have now.