Not enough money for rural broadband, conference hears

NORTH BAY Ont. — The CRTC announced on Wednesday that it is now accepting a second round of applications for its Broadband Fund, as those in attendance at a conference focusing on rural connectivity heard about the need for more funding and more intergovernmental cooperation to ease bureaucratic barriers. Despite programs like the CRTC’s and the federal government’s $1.7 billion Universal Broadband Fund, as well as their provincial counterparts, there is not enough money currently available to bring adequate connectivity to all areas of Canada, panelists said at the Bridging the Digital Divide conference in North Bay, Ont. “No, it’s not enough money,” said Angela Lawrence, vice-chair at Canadian Communication Systems Alliance (CCSA) and general manager at Hay Communications Co-operative Ltd. She said programs also need to be responsive to the specific needs of each area. “What is an issue for me in southwestern Ontario, north of London on the shores of Lake Huron is not the same issue as others find in the far North.” Geoff Gillon, executive director of the Rainy River Business Development Corp., agreed. “I have to reiterate that. There’s not enough money,” he said. “There are two or three or four different funds, definitely two levels of government between the provinces and the federal government,” he added, explaining that navigating them can be a challenge and the money can be difficult to obtain. “If you go say, to the province, but you don’t have your federal funding confirmed, even though you have a telco partner, they say ‘well, your money’s not confirmed,’ so you’ve got this back and forth.” Vince Gagné, director of government relations at Telus Corp., said that Quebec launched its own rural broadband program in October because due to the federal election, “there was no-one to talk to in Ottawa for the last six months over this.” In response to a question about whether the answer is to have one central vision for the digital economy from the federal government, Rick Hodgkinson, president and CEO of Galaxy Broadband Communications Inc. retorted that the federal government can’t even “get the provinces to agree on beer crossing borders.” The CRTC’s second call for applications, announced Wednesday, will be open to “all types of eligible projects in all eligible geographic areas across Canada,” the CRTC said on its website. The call will be accompanied by a set of eligibility maps and an updated application guide, it said. The first call for the CRTC’s fund, whose successful applications will be announced in next year, was limited to the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut and all satellite-dependent communities in Canada. That process closed on October 3. The $750-million fund was announced in late 2016 as part of the regulator’s basic service mandate, which has a goal of providing the country with access to minimum internet speeds of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload. Chris Seidl, the CRTC’s executive director of telecom, addressed the conference Wednesday evening. He said there is no question “that the business case is challenging in many remote regions,” but also that there is “no question that meeting these needs extends far beyond anything the CRTC or even government can do alone. Closing the digital divide is a shared responsibility between the private and public sector.” He said, according to a transcript, that will require coordination between various players, including the CRTC, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, and Infrastructure Canada, as well as “the provinces and territories, municipalities, Indigenous governments, the telecommunications industry and non-governmental organizations.” Seidl said that “ultimately, what’s required is shared leadership – and a shared response – to the challenges posed by the digital divide that disadvantages Canadians in rural and remote areas.” Earlier in the day, the conference heard stories about inadequate connectivity across Canada, from the most remote areas to just outside the country’s largest metropolitan area. In a session focusing on First Nations connectivity, Sean Power of the Kativik regional government outlined that youth from the community of Cape Dorset in Nunavut will, when they travel to a large city, spend time pirating as much content as can they fit on a USB stick. “That USB stick will be passed on from person to person and that becomes the content they consume for months on end,” he said -- noting that’s also how TV and movies are shared in North Korea. “It’s 2019 and there are children who are Canadians who are transmitting files in the same way people in North Korea,” he said. In his own speech, Allan Thompson, the mayor of Caledon, Ont., outlined the inadequate coverage in his community, which, as he demonstrated with a photo from one vantage point, is so close to Toronto the CN Tower is visible. “From that point, there is zero connectivity. You can’t dial out to anybody. Yet you see eight million people to the south of you,” he said. “It’s the have and have nots.” — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca

Not enough money for rural broadband, conference hears

News | November 13, 2019

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Not enough money for rural broadband, conference hears

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