Analyzing the broadband divide in the underserved Southern Gulf Islands
Date
2025
Authors
Archer, Finnegan
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Victoria
Abstract
Broadband internet access has rapidly become essential for facilitating social, educational, and economic development. Yet rural communities lacking the economies of scale to justify the upfront costs of traditional cabled connections face a digital divide. To address this, line-of-sight (LOS) technologies help alleviate infrastructure deployment expenses, although they come with unique performance challenges. Starlink, SpaceX's low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite service, connects user terminals to overhead satellites and can outperform the Universal Service Objective (USO). Similarly, cellular networks such as those provided by Rogers and Telus use radio signals optimized for coverage and reliability. Our research explores the real-world performance of these solutions in the Southern Gulf Islands using a vehicular setup equipped with a Starlink Mini dish, an external GPS module, a dashboard camera, and cellular modems carrying Telus and Rogers SIMs. Metrics including latency, iperf3 throughput, GPS location, and cellular SNR were gathered alongside footage to assess performance. Quantitative data analysis demonstrated that regional terrain features, such as dense tree coverage, heavily affect line-of-sight performance.
Description
Keywords
digital divide, Line-of-Sight networks, network performance testing, broadband connectivity, Low-Earth-Orbit satellites, cellular networks