Hi All –
Just a head’s up that we a journalist/videographer that
has been spending time with a community network in
Northern Canada in a First Nations community. I have no
idea when the video will be ready, but we’ll try to
introduce that team to DC-3.
Also note the info below on a huge new initiative by the
Canadian Government…they are keen to work on community
networks and with their first nations communities. We
will send more data when we have it:
Rural
broadband program aims to bring 300 communities up to
speed
News | THE
WIRE REPORT
Published:
Thursday, 12/15/2016 5:11 pm EST
WAKEFIELD,
Que. — The federal government’s new rural broadband
program will focus on making high-speed connections, as
opposed to simply forging Internet connections for rural
and remote communities, Innovation, Science and Economic
Development Minister Navdeep Bains said Thursday, in
announcing some of the long-awaited details to the Liberal
commitment outlined in this spring’s budget.
The new
program, which will operate under the name Connect to
Innovate, picks up where the previous government’s
Connecting Canadians program left off, with $500 million
through 2021 to improve the Internet connections in 300
communities across the country.
The
government is focused on “investments to really provide
businesses and households the ability to have higher
speeds and higher connectivity so they can get the data
they need so they can run their businesses, for example,
so they can get a good quality education; it really
impacts their lives,” Bains told reporters after
announcing the new program parameters in the Wakefield,
Que., library.
The program
will primarily support, on a cost-sharing basis, what
Bains called the “digital highway,” the middle-mile
backbone infrastructure, with an emphasis on fibre,
“because the idea is we want to increase the speed and
capacity, and fibre connectivity is a key part,” he said.
Some of the program’s funds will also be allocated to
create last-mile connections for households and businesses
that don’t have access to speeds of at least 5 Mbps.
The new
program keeps the previous government’s high-speed
threshold of a 5 Mbps download speed, though Bains said he
“must confess that’s very, very slow. It’s the bare, bare
minimum.”
Bains added:
“We are now in 2016, there are many Canadians who need
much higher speeds, a much better response rate. That’s
why we’re focused on broadband connectivity — so once you
get that fibre-to-the-institute, fibre-to-the-home,
hopefully that speed will increase enormously, and be 10
times, potentially, faster than that.”
John Lawford,
executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre,
noted in a phone interview the low speed and highlighted
the CRTC’s basic services proceeding during which some
said that a 5 Mbps target was outdated, while others
called it sufficient for a basic service.
During the
public hearing in the spring, northern Internet Service
Providers (ISPs) said that setting minimum speeds was less
important than having resources to build backbone
infrastructure.
According to
the program’s website, 1 Gbps is the threshold for funding
new, or upgrading existing, backbone connections.
The focus on
the middle mile is a course correction from the previous
program, Stuart Jack, a partner at Nordicity, said in a
phone interview.
“I think
they’ve got it right in terms of enabling more middle-mile
investment, bringing fibre into the town and then letting
various service suppliers compete within the town itself,”
Jack said. “From an economics point of view, of how do you
enable competition best with public investment, that’s
probably the right balance.”
In an email
statement, Rogers Communications Inc. spokesman Andrew
Garas said the company is “pleased to see the government’s
investment in connecting the remaining Canadians who don’t
yet have access to high speed Internet and we look forward
to reviewing the program details.”
Looking ahead
to next week when the CRTC unveils its decision from the
basic service hearing, the federal program will serve as a
“helpful stop-gap measure for access” until the
implications of that decision are fully meted out, Lawford
said, adding that overall the program was positive, though
not the whole solution.
“Consider the
climate four years ago,” Lawford said of broadband in
Canada. “It was a complete wasteland… We’ve come a long
way.”
In a press
release, advocacy group OpenMedia said any investment is
welcome, but that the country needs a “comprehensive
National Broadband Strategy to ensure rural and remote
Canadians can catch up.”
Connect to
Innovate is open to any entity aside from individuals and
other federal bodies.
Where
Connecting Canadians initially set a goal of connecting
280,000 households, the new program doesn’t have such a
target, focusing instead on hitting 300 out of the 1,600
communities the department has identified as eligible for
new backbone funding.
“But I’m
confident that our objective right now is to get that
fibre-to-the-institute, fibre to the communities. And in
some cases, we might focus on the last mile, in other
cases, once we get it there, that’s significant enough to
do the hub-and-spoke model which will allow that
connectivity to go to different homes,” Bains said of the
variable number of households Connect to Innovate will
affect.
More than 250
stakeholders were consulted while putting together the
program, Bains said at the announcement, which was
attended by nearly a dozen Liberal MPs who represent rural
ridings.
The
consultation led to creating a flexible model, said Bains,
though he noted that satellite-dependent communities still
face challenges.
“The minute
we receive the proposals, we’re going to be evaluating
them and getting the money out quickly. It’s really,
really important,” he said, adding that “there’s many
communities that are reliant on satellite, for example,
for Internet connectivity and there’s capacity issues. So
we’re very mindful that we have to act very soon.”
Applications
will be accepted from Jan. 16 to March 13.
— With
reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca
and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca