Techvibes has pointed out today that Industry Canada is surveying, or more specifically crowdsourcing, Canadians about their broadband connectivity. It’s an interesting survey, but misses a key part of the question – how much does it cost?

As Mark Goldberg has pointed out, and in this case I agree with him, Canadian’s already have universal access to broadband, or at least a decent connection. The real question is at what cost?

I’m sure any of the service providers would be happy to string me a fiber with GigE connection to the Yukon, but it would sure be expensive. The question of universal access to broadband is whether it’s affordable.

If you fill in the survey you’ll find there’s no question about the price you’re paying for your service. That would provide a huge amount of data for them to analyze in terms of looking at price per mbps of service in each region.

Companies like Xplornet have been serving rural areas for years, but at a connection fee of a few hundred dollars, plus a relatively expensive ongoing service compared to what we pay in the city, it’s may be considered an extreme luxury. Additionally, it’s probably fair to say that people in rural areas make less money, so asking what the income level of the people surveyed are would also be good too, so they could analyze the relative cost of the service compared to their income level.