Are provinces filling the federal broadband strategy gap?

Nova Scotia may not be formulating its provincial broadband plan as a direct response to federal inaction, but that doesn’t mean the provincial government isn’t acting out of a need to fill a void affecting its residents. “It’s like a lot of things in that the provincial government is closer to the people than the federal government is, in certain respects,” David MacNeil, senior advisor in the Nova Scotia department of business, said in a phone interview. “There’s no federal, provincial, municipal responsibility for making sure people have good Internet, but government does try to be responsive to the needs of its people, regardless of the level, and this is something the provincial government felt that if there’s something we can do, then it probably should do.” This spring, the Nova Scotia government will receive a consultant’s report proposing a middle-mile strategy to boost broadband connectivity for the province’s rural population. In the request for proposals issued last summer, the government said its overall goal was to “develop a strategic direction and coordinate the implementation of high speed internet solution(s) to enhance the service levels in rural Nova Scotia thereby enabling the achievement of social and economic growth for the province.” The winning proponent, with a $651,615 bid, was Brightstar Canada, which is working with the Eastern Ontario Regional Network and a local partner to develop the long-term plan the province is looking for. “If you don’t have a robust and quote-unquote future-proof middle mile, your last mile can be pretty ineffective or can be obsolete within a short period of time,” MacNeil said. “So we’ve always felt it was best to see how we can build that middle-mile strategy so the focus can now be on the last-mile connections.” Last spring, CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais decried — in the midst of a basic services public hearing — the lack of a national broadband strategy, saying the CRTC’s actions could be the “last, best chance” for achieving such a plan. The decision resulting from that proceeding, issued in December, included the creation of a $750-million fund for improving wireless and wireline service in underserved communities and set minimum download speeds at 50 Mbps. In its submission to the federal government’s consultations on its Innovation Agenda, the CRTC continued to push for a national plan, highlighting that its basic services objective was only one piece of a much-larger puzzle. “The CRTC recognizes that achieving the universal service objective for Canadians is a major undertaking with multiple complex challenges, requiring billions of dollars in new investments. The combined efforts of all governments, along with industry and other stakeholders, are critical to achieving this goal. The decision, in its creation of a new funding mechanism to support broadband deployment in underserved areas of the country, is only one part of what must be a collaborative effort to bring universal broadband availability to Canadians,” the submission said. It also noted that “in general terms,” the record of the BSO proceeding “supports the federal government’s leadership.” When asked in June about the potential inclusion of a national broadband strategy in the Innovation Agenda, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains pointed to the government’s Connect to Innovate program, which was first announced a year ago as part of the 2016 budget. Details of the five-year, $500-million funding commitment were outlined in December. Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) Canada has reached out to the Nova Scotian government about how the two middle-mile focused plans can work in concert, MacNeil said. This isn’t Nova Scotia’s first kick at the provincial-strategy can. A decade ago, the Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia project did its part to increase connectivity throughout the province, but today those connections are left wanting. At the program’s 2007 launch, there were 93,000 civic addresses without Internet access, M.J. MacDonald, then-acting deputy minister for the department of business, told the legislature’s standing committee on economic development in a January 2016 update. According to a transcript, MacDonald said the public-private partnership project ultimately extended coverage to 99 per cent of the province’s residences at the required 1.5 Mbps speed, with the province kicking in almost $19 million of the $74 million cost. She acknowledged that “the speed required for a quality Internet connection today is much faster than it was in 2007; 1.5 megabits per second can be okay if it’s a consistent, reliable speed, but for many rural Nova Scotians they don’t even get half of that on a regular basis.” The program stemmed from a campaign promise by then-premier Rodney MacDonald to have the entire province connected by the end of 2009. “There were a lot of complaints that the old Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia money could have been spent better,” MacNeil said. “A lot of that could be hindsight but we just wanted to avoid some of the outcomes from that and just to get some expert advice on how we could best go forward.” According to court documents from a 2016 breach of confidence case involving a Nova Scotian company that claimed the project officials used their proprietary information to award bids to competitors, project lead Nancy Flam “had no technical background in the provision of broadband internet, no system to deliver the service, no specific geographical area in which to test a delivery system and a tight deadline to meet.” A Nova Scotia Supreme Court justice ruled against the province in an August decision. This time around, the province is consulting with experts from the get-go and is looking to avoid papering the province with technology that won’t stand the test of time, MacNeil said, though he acknowledged that when it comes to technology, there’s always a risk of something becoming obsolete. “But you could also use that as an excuse to never do anything,” MacNeil said. “I think most people agree, if you could put fibre through the entire province you’re good for the foreseeable future, at least. You couldn’t do it cheaply, but you’d have the future proof you’re looking for.” Despite the federal government’s jurisdiction over regulation, provinces have traditionally been carrying the load for public goods, said a 2013 paper authored by Ryerson University professor Catherine Middleton and researcher Reza Rajabiun. That gives the provinces “stronger incentives to care about digital infrastructure” to help boost economic development. “Since substantive changes to Canada’s national policy strategy have not been forthcoming, decentralized solutions by the provinces represent a viable option of mitigating concerns by end users and the business community about the quality of Internet connectivity in the country,” the paper added. Outside of Nova Scotia’s plans, those decentralized solutions have mostly comprised of provinces putting up funds for rural broadband improvement, the most-recent of which appears to be Quebec’s $100-million commitment announced in its 2016 budget. Manitoba had a provincial broadband strategy in the mid-2000s that aimed for 100-per-cent connectivity by 2010. But now, according to a 2016 Brandon University Rural Development Institute research brief on the State of Rural information and Communication Technologies in Manitoba, the provincial government had “neither a broadband strategy nor targets for broadband. Nevertheless, much progress has been made in the province with most of the population having access to basic broadband of 1.5Mbps download speed.” Currently in the midst of an election campaign, B.C. Premier Christy Clark announced earlier this month a new $40-million purse to “expand and enhance high-speed Internet” as part of a rural economic development strategy, according to a March 7 press release. The province’s website states that 95 per cent of the province’s households have high-speed Internet access, and that B.C. has a goal of hitting 100 per cent by the end of 2021. It also notes that since “telecommunications are regulated federally in Canada, the B.C. government cannot direct private companies where to make investments,” but offers resources to link communities and service providers. Prince Edward Island’s Rural Broadband Initiative was launched in 2008, a collaboration between the province and the now BCE Inc.-owned Bell Aliant to extend broadband to all of the province’s communities. In a December 2009 press release, Bell and the province “confirmed the completion of the broadband infrastructure build to deliver high-speed Internet to virtually all areas of the Island by the end of the year,” alongside the announcement of a new $1-million Rural Broadband Fund, “a five-year strategic partnership to support innovation in information technology across PEI.” Ontario’s ministry of agriculture, food and rural affairs puts broadband under its municipal infrastructure strategy, which involves spending “more than $130 billion in public infrastructure over the next 10 years, supporting over 110,000 jobs on average each year in construction and related industries,” according to its website. The Ontario Chamber of Commerce reached out to Premier Kathleen Wynne last summer to ask the government to take more of a leading role in getting broadband to where it needs to be. “By working with the Ontario business community, we believe that government can develop broadband policy that is responsive to existing needs while not dissuading private sector investment,” the July 21 letter said. The chamber’s pre-budget submission released in February echoed the letter, recommending that the province “consider broadband as a component of infrastructure,” “facilitate the creation of additional bodies that can help the business case for federal and private sector broadband investment,” “benchmark Ontario’s internet speeds and access versus competitor jurisdictions,” and “when assessing funding requests, establish that high speed broadband connectivity to the last mile is a priority.” In a phone interview, chamber president and CEO Allan O’Dette referred to the potential for an uprooted trade landscape under U.S. President Donald Trump, noting “we’re in a very competitive environment right now.” Broadband Internet “is really one of those modern 21st century infrastructure pieces that’s critical to being successful” and can’t be confined to major metropolitan areas, he said. “Broadband is critical to fundamentally strengthen our province from cities, towns and communities right across this province. That’s why we’re calling on government to work collectively, to work collaboratively with the private sector to ensure that that happens,” O’Dette said. “Because if we can’t strengthen communities around the province as well as Toronto, for instance, then we’re not going to be successful.” O’Dette said the chamber received a response from Wynne to its July letter that indicated her support for the high-speed connectivity. A mid-mandate letter issued in September to Infrastructure Minister Bob Chiarelli directs him to work with his colleague, the minister of economic development and growth, on “expanding broadband infrastructure and improving connectivity in communities across the province.” The Ontario chamber head said he speaks with his provincial and national counterparts on a monthly basis and all are navigating the issue in some fashion. “The private sector has moved to lay the fibre in areas where obviously they can get a good return, but we need to think differently about how we get to areas that are under serviced,” O’Dette said, adding that the chamber is looking for the same kind of public-private partnerships that they believe are the “best way” for building other infrastructure projects like roads and hospitals. But the best way for a province to handle its own broadband strategy might be to set up a pot of money and then get out of the way, according to an Alberta academic. Michael McNally, an assistant professor at the University of Alberta’s school of library and information studies, has been working with the Alberta ministry of economic development and trade to create resources for regional development of broadband networks. “Provided they’re given sufficient information, I think that would be a useful approach,” he said. “Looking across the country it’s easy to say fibre is clearly the gold standard and the technology of the future, but deploying that fibre all across the northern regions of the provinces and all across the territories is going to be a huge, huge cost and letting regions kind of figure out what solutions might work for them in the interim works best.” Alberta still has an estimated two per cent of its residents without access to 5 Mbps download speeds, according to a 2016 report by Cybera — described on its website as a “not-for-profit, technical agency that is helping Alberta advance its IT frontiers” — on the state of the province’s digital infrastructure. Though the province doesn’t have a formal broadband strategy, it does have a few unique features, such as its SuperNet connecting public institutions such as schools, hospitals and libraries to a broadband network. The SuperNet is governed by the province, but operated by an Axia NetMedia Corp. subsidiary. While it’s possible for communities to create an ISP and use the SuperNet’s transit to bring fibre-to-the-home to their residents, it’s not necessarily popular or cost-effective given Axia’s rates, McNally said. “There’s a lot of Telus and Shaw fibre around the province that’s often used to get people to Calgary, in particular, at the Internet exchange there,” he said. There would be a great deal of value in an overarching strategy, McNally said, but in his work with communities it’s become apparent that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. “Even though the Olds solution is appealing — a tiny town of just over 8,000 people has the best Internet in Canada — not every community in Alberta wants to build a fibre network and very few are interested in operating an ISP. So we see all kinds of strange permutations,” he said. These include partnering with incumbents to build out fibre, or communities building their own towers and soliciting wireless Internet service providers to come in and set up shop. In January, advocacy group OpenMedia launched a web portal to help boost community broadband projects, specifically those invested in by local governments, such as those in Olds, Alta., southwestern Ontario’s SouthWest Integrated Fibre Technology (SWIFT) project and the Eastern Ontario Regional Network’s fibre backbone project. “Seeing the federal government or provincial governments come up with a strategy would be useful, especially if it is designed to empower the lower levels of government to solve the problem,” McNally said. — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Are provinces filling the federal broadband strategy gap?

News | March 17, 2017

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Are provinces filling the federal broadband strategy gap?

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