Connect to Innovate yields $4.4B ask

OTTAWA — Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada is currently sifting through nearly 900 applications to the Connect to Innovate program requesting more than $4.4 billion in funding, a House of Commons committee heard Tuesday. “We had an unprecedented, incredible demand” to the federal government’s five-year, $500-million rural broadband program, Sue Hart, director general of spectrum, information technologies and telecommunications in ISED’s Connecting Canadians branch, told the industry, science and technology committee as it began its study of broadband connectivity in rural Canada. “And these are from coast to coast to coast. Applications are currently being reviewed and we expect the minister will select projects by the end of the summer,” Hart said. There are applications in the batch that won’t get some areas of the country to the CRTC’s prescribed standard speeds of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload, Hart said, noting the Innovation Canada program didn’t set a speed target. “We have a number of applications for Nunavut; you know, whatever is selected is not going to hit 50 Mbps. We will be looking at the scalability of the technology and that’s part of our comparative criteria, to look at ‘OK, is it scalable to be able to do something better and faster in the future,’” she said. On Tuesday morning ISED and CRTC telecommunications officials briefed the committee about their various decisions and programs affecting high-speed Internet connectivity in underserved areas. Liberal MP Frank Baylis said he hadn’t realized it was a big issue, as his Montreal riding doesn’t include any rural constituents, and when he looked at available coverage maps, he saw figures saying 99 per cent of households are covered at 1.5 Mbps speeds, and 96 per cent have access to 5 Mbps speeds. “So that says to me ‘well it seems we’ve got most of the heavy lifting done, it’s a very small part — four per cent of our huge country — that has to be done.’ But then every time I spoke to members of my caucus that were in rural ridings, they were up in arms about the lack of service. So there’s a dichotomy here,” Baylis said. He also pointed to the figure stemming from the Connect to Innovate program applications. “Again, if we’ve got 96 per cent covered, where’s that demand coming from?” Baylis asked, also asking about a figure previously mentioned during the meeting citing 18 per cent of households without high-speed coverage. Chris Seidl, the CRTC’s executive director of telecommunications, told the committee that 82 per cent of households have access to the speeds outlined in the commission’s basic service objective. “So anything outside of the main urban, downtown core, suburbia area does not have the 50/10 and that’s where the gaps are,” Seidl said. Those gaps and that dichotomy were the reason Conservative MP Earl Dreeshen proposed the committee undertake the study, by way of a motion the group approved back in March 2016. “Basically what we’ve been looking at and hearing from people primarily in the rural areas is it doesn’t seem as though there’s been a major focus on the significance and importance of broadband,” Dreeshen said, in an interview. “And with the precision agriculture, all the types of things that are engaged right now, and the people are dealing with, we felt we better make sure we’re on top of this before major decisions are made as far as regulations are concerned.” There are data-intensive uses outside of urban areas that need to be considered, Dreeshen added, noting “we have John Deere, for example, that is making more money on its data than it is on the steel its selling.” This requires flexibility, he said. According to committee minutes, Dreeshen’s motion requested the study have a main focus on “developing a plan to improve rural connectivity, local rural economies, and community engagement; that the committee, make recommendations that identify and address; a) the financial challenges of implementing high-speed services, b) what constitutes acceptable high-speed service, c) the regulatory changes to encourage the implementation of high-speed service.” Dreeshen said he doesn’t necessarily want the committee to hear from major telecoms about their rural and remote coverage, but rather from rural-based success stories such as O-Net, the municipally owned provider in Olds, Alta., which is located in his riding. “I’ve been engaged with distance learning, telehealth and so on in my past life and I know how important that is,” Dreeshen said. “It isn’t a case of ‘oh, well people might want to go out to the rural parts.’ People are in the rural parts of this country and they can do amazing things.” — With reporting by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Connect to Innovate yields $4.4B ask

News | May 30, 2017

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Connect to Innovate yields $4.4B ask

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