2025 offered as connectivity target as pressure to fast track rises

Universal connectivity at the CRTC’s universal service objective speeds could be achieved by 2025 if funds were administered in the right way, according to Ryerson University research fellow Reza Rajibiun, a time frame labelled “realistic” by Federation of Canadian Municipalities rural director Ray Orb. Industry stakeholders and experts say the current 2030 target for universal connectivity at the CRTC’s universal service objectives of 50 Mbps download, 10 Mbps upload and unlimited data should be brought forward, but said a recent call by the federal Conservatives for it to be achieved by 2021 was unachievable. Rural Economic Development Minister Maryam Monsef, who said the Conservatives’ plan relied on “unrealistic thinking,” has pledged to reveal how the government will speed up rural broadband funding “soon,” but has not commented on whether the 2030 target date will remain in place. In the 2019 budget, the government announced its plan for 95 per cent of Canadians to have access to the universal service objective speeds — the minimum that the CRTC in 2016 said all Canadians should be able to access — by 2025, with all Canadians having access by 2030. Rajabiun said in a phone interview that network build outs were “long processes of technological change” and the 14 recommendations released by the Conservatives would not result in universal connectivity by next year. Universal connectivity could be achieved by 2025 if programs were designed in such a way that they learned from the mistakes of previous funding programs, Rajabiun said. “It depends on how well you do it, it’s not just a question of throwing money at it, lots of money has been going out, it’s how you spend it and what it goes to and what kind of technologies and are they scalable,” Rajabiun said. Orb, also the president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, said bringing the target forward to 2025 seemed like a “realistic” goal. According to the CRTC’s latest Communications Monitoring Report, 40.8 per cent of rural Canadians had access to speeds at the standard. “Realistically I think we could do it in the next five years because technology is changing, we also have more funding available now than we have had before and we’ve got more people pushing for this,” Orb said in a phone interview. Orb said opening the federal government’s $1.7 billion Universal Broadband Fund for applications immediately was key to fast tracking the target, and said FCM had been continually lobbying multiple ministers, including Monsef about doing so. The government’s Universal Broadband Fund landing page, last updated on May 2, says the fund will launch in “the coming months,” but Orb said he was hopeful Monsef would soon announce a revised date. “Although we have some funding, we need to get that money out sooner rather than later, so we’ve been pushing the federal government to get that money out because we have lots of rural communities that are wanting to apply for it but they can’t get their hands on it,” Orb said of the UBF. Orb said a collaborative approach was key to achieving universal connectivity. “We need some partnerships, we need the provinces, we need the federal government funding, we need municipalities and ISPs to work together to do these projects,” he said. Multiple provinces have recently announced plans to speed up their own rural broadband funding, while the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc. and Xplornet Communications Inc. to fast track capital investments. The federal NDP last week joined the Conservatives in calling for the target to be significantly shortened, urging the government to double its investment in rural broadband in a bid to achieve universal connectivity by 2023. Last week, a group of civil society organizations, businesses, and academics launched the Get Canada Connected coalition, urging all levels of government to commit the necessary resources for 100 per cent of Canadians to have access to speeds at the standard as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the CRTC, which has yet to reveal the results of the first round of applications for its $750 million rural broadband fund, pushed back its second round to June 1 due to the pandemic. Cybera policy analyst Imran Mohiuddin labeled the Conservative call for universal connectivity to be achieved by 2021 as more a “call to action” than an achievable deadline, saying in a phone interview that it was “well outside of what I’ve heard proposed of a reasonable timeframe for universal connectivity, and that’s under ideal circumstances.” The government’s current 2030 target “goes against everything we know about the rate of growth and data usage,” Mohiuddin said. “Today's high speed internet is tomorrow’s dialup and it changes so rapidly that it’s probably not a good idea to have one standard set for ten years, especially considering that period of time is supposed to also cover the deployment of 5G,” Mohiuddin said. Mohiuddin said a number of different factors meant it was extremely difficult to say when universal connectivity could be achieved, saying he was “not sure if anybody knows”. “I think generally speaking it depends on the kind of money that’s committed to it, anything can be done with the right amount of money it’s just a matter of whether the political will exists to do it and how fast it can be done.” The creation of a national broadband strategy should be the first step towards achieving the target, Mohiuddin said, arguing the approach to date had been “patchwork.” “I think it needs to be an overarching strategy that covers a decent period of time, five to ten years, where everyone has an understanding of what the priority is and what the time frame is, that’s step one,” Mohiuddin said. “From there it’s figuring out the amount of money that can be made available and where it needs to go.” The need for a national strategy was rebutted by Rajabiun, who argued the knowledge base to achieve the goal was already in federal, provincial and local governments, private enterprise and educational institutions. “Trying to come up with a national strategy is counterproductive to getting it done properly,” Rajabiun said. “Enough talking has been done and a national strategy could be very restrictive on a big diverse country.” Rogers and Telus Corp. did not respond to requests for comment about what an achievable timeframe for achieving universal connectivity at the standards was. In an email, Bell spokesman Marc Choma said companies like Bell were “already working hard to close the gap” on the remaining 14 per cent of Canadians who did not have access to internet speeds at the standards. “Our own investments in networks and innovation are making this possible, and new technologies like 5G may well make it possible to close the gap even faster, assuming we continue to have a regulatory and policy environment that supports and encourages investment,” Choma said. “But there will always be parts of the country where government funding will be needed. We’ve partnered with governments across the country on broadband initiatives and are ready and willing to continue doing so.” Choma cited a proposal by Bell-owned Northwestel lodged with the CRTC that would provide speeds at the standard to “every community in the North with terrestrial service by 2023” as one that needed government support to get off the ground, while Bell’s wireless home internet — which currently reaches several hundred thousand homes — is planned to reach one million homes, and won’t require government funding. Correction: The Federation of Canadian Municipalties was incorrectly referred to as FRM, and the CRTC universal service objective as including speeds of 10 Mbps download. — With reporting by Adam Langenberg at alangenberg@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

2025 offered as connectivity target as pressure to fast track rises

News | May 19, 2020

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2025 offered as connectivity target as pressure to fast track rises

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