Small telecoms lobby for access to federal broadband funding

OTTAWA — Representatives from smaller telecommunications companies descended on Parliament Hill Tuesday, pushing for lawmakers to consult with them in the design of the new federal rural broadband program. “We found in the past, although our members have been able to access some funds, very often there’s a great deal of red tape involved,” Alyson Townsend, Canadian Cable Systems Alliance (CCSA) president and CEO, said at a morning press conference. In its first budget, the Liberal government said it would introduce a $500 million rural broadband program. It has yet to launch any details about the program, aside from plans for the money to be spread over a five-year span. “Our members tend to be entrepreneurs who are on the ground, working and providing services,” Townsend said. “They don’t have a lot of staff or resources to apply for government funding.” Once the access is there, the CCSA would like to see money made available for building out broadband infrastructure and connectivity, Townsend said. “The costs in more-remote areas are much greater than they are in downtown areas and that is something we would like to see monitored and prescribed by the government,” she added. CCSA represents more than 115 independent companies across the country and brought 25 of its members for 50 meetings with members of Parliament and staff. One goal for the group was to raise their own profile among lawmakers, Townsend said. “I think that not a lot of people knew that these 115 companies existed across the country. So I think it’s actually been welcome information by a lot of government officials and MPs because they can see how we can assist in connecting Canadians in areas where the larger companies don’t wish to be,” she said. CCSA members have been “trying, for the past 10 years” to “come to some kind of arrangement” with larger companies to partner on services, Townsend said. “But that never comes to be, probably because they would prefer to serve those subscribers themselves rather than introduce competition,” she said. A lack of competition is to blame for the high rates Canadians pay for cellular and Internet service, Townsend said, noting that CCSA reps are advocating for wholesale access to incumbent networks. In rural areas, where it’s “not economical to install a second fibre network to connect small communities,” bandwidth access can be priced “so as to effectively foreclose competition,” Townsend said. BCE Inc. is currently in the process of appealing to the federal cabinet a CRTC decision mandating wholesale access by smaller competitors to fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks. The CRTC is also in the process of reviewing wholesale high-speed access rates that large telecoms charge small companies. Despite a lack of a prescribed telecommunications policy by the government, Townsend said the CCSA doesn’t feel as though it’s shooting in the dark during its meeting with lawmakers. “I think that we’ve seen in the mandates where we fit and the budget gave us great hope the number of meetings we’ve been able to secure and the attention we have received and the attentiveness,” Townsend said. “We hold out great hope for this government.” — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Small telecoms lobby for access to federal broadband funding

News | May 10, 2016

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Small telecoms lobby for access to federal broadband funding

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