ITPA pitches ‘sustainability component’ for rural broadband programs

The government should create a “sustainability component” to rural broadband funding projects so they don’t dwindle in quality or eventually fail, according to an association representing independent rural incumbent local telephone businesses. The Independent Telecommunications Providers Association (ITPA) raised concerns in its written submission to an expert panel reviewing Canada’s communications laws that rural broadband funding projects currently emphasize funding up-front capital costs of a project, to the “almost total exclusion” of helping with operational costs. “Without a sustainability component...subsidized telecom projects in rural areas will eventually suffer and there may even be further project shut downs,” it cautions in its submission to the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review panel. The ITPA said its member companies have seen instances where a project is granted capital costs, only to eventually see it “languish with yesterday’s technology, be sold for pennies on the dollar or even be decommissioned when it becomes too expensive or inconvenient for the service provider to maintain.” “For example, was recently approached by a local grain elevator at the height of its busy harvest season frantically looking for connectivity. It had previously been serviced by a wireless provider that had received federal funding to roll out its network but could no longer justify operating the network in this sparsely-populated rural area and shut it down.” It said the CRTC’s funding regime for local voice networks in high-cost areas, which is now being phased-out, had included operational funding support, but programs such as Innovation, Science and Economic Development’s (ISED) Connecting Canadians and Connect to Innovate programs, and the CRTC’s own broadband fund, do not have a “sustainability component” built into them. The submission also suggests bringing Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) into the Canadian wireless marketplace to address competition in rural areas -- what it says is the “only possible response” to Ottawa’s current approach to licensing spectrum, if the department wants to promote a competitive market. It said the way Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) “dispenses spectrum through its tier structure and auctions approach effectively eliminates the possibility of participation by small service providers.” “If MVNO is not an option, ISED needs to make major changes to its spectrum licencing approach to facilitate participation by small service providers.”

ITPA pitches ‘sustainability component’ for rural broadband programs

Brief | February 13, 2019

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ITPA pitches ‘sustainability component’ for rural broadband programs

Brief | February 13, 2019

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