City of Toronto Free Wireless Internet Network

Next year, I am debating starting either a non profit or capped profit organization with the explicit goal of creating a free Metropolitan area network (MAN network) for the city of Toronto. The idea would be to offer free, high speed wireless internet to the greater Toronto area.

Internet access is a social cause I carely deep about. If you’re not Canadian, you probably don’t know this, but we pay the highest internet access rates in the world for cellular data. The same three companies have been allowed to exist as oligopolies for several decades now and the government has done very little to protect consumers. These companies exploit Canadians, have questionable ties to federal leadership (and our security apparatus), and have very predatory practices.

The idea that a child may have to go to McDonald’s just to use their Wifi and submit their homework deeply pains me. Likewise, home internet rates here are approaching $100/mo, which puts a strain on the budget of everyday, hardworking families.

Unlike the baby boomer class of politicians and bureaucrats across various levels of Canadian government, I grew up with the internet and view it as akin to oxygen. It is beyond an everyday necessity. The idea that we charge for this public good resource and exploit the working class is deeply upsetting to me. In this country, we don’t charge for oxygen or at public water fountains, yet we continue to enrich and legally entrench the billionaire Rogers family.

I find it so backwards, that we still charge for internet even in 2021 … what kind of world will we be living in if internet is still a huge bill consumers have to pay in 2030? Internet access is already recognized as a human right. At the same time, it is a significant driver for our economic activity. Canada is already a socialist country, it seems, at least to me, to be an obvious investment to make.

My first step next year will be seeking large amounts of funding, likely from Canada’s elite families. I don’t think it will be feasible to create a MAN network for the entire city of Toronto, but I will try to create some kind of pilot, maybe for a single neighborhood in Toronto. This non profit will likely be a multi year project, and I’m anticipating many municipal and regulatory battles, but it’s a cause I deeply believe in and am willing to fight for.