Universal Broadband Fund applications to open in ‘coming days’: Monsef

The federal government will open applications for its $1.7 billion Universal Broadband Fund in the “coming days,” according to Rural Economic Development Minister Maryam Monsef. During a Monday morning keynote address, Monsef told Canada’s Rural & Remote Broadband Conference that COVID-19 had “forced us to reconsider our timelines and has added greater urgency to this work.” “Calls for applications are going to go out and we are counting on our partnerships with municipalities, with indigenous communities, provinces, territories, small ISPs, the bigger telcos, to connect every Canadian to this essential service,” Monsef told the conference. Monsef did not say when the government intended to announce successful applicants to the fund. She did not explicitly address whether the government hoped to achieve universal connectivity at the CRTC’s universal service objectives of 50 Mpbs download and 10 Mbps upload before its 2030 target, but said it wanted to hear from companies who could help the government connect Canadians “far earlier” than that. Monsef, who told the House Industry committee last month that the UBF would not use the often-criticised hexagon mapping model, said during her address that the new mapping model was “much more precise” and would ensure “we don’t leave any Canadians behind in our efforts to connect.” Asked by The Wire Report to provide further detail about the new mapping model, UBF timelines and whether the government had revised its universal connectivity goal, Monsef’s office said it was not able to do so at this time. Last week, Monsef’s spokeswoman Marie-Pier Baril said the government was “working aggressively” to launch the fund and was ensuring it would include “whatever network infrastructure that is needed to best meet rural and remote connectivity needs, including fibre, fixed wireless and satellite technologies, depending on the region.” Federation of Canadian Municipalities rural forum chair Ray Orb, who has previously called for the UBF applications to open as soon as possible, said in a phone interview that he would like to speak to Monsef about the details of the roll-out but said its fast-tracking was “generally good news for us.” Orb said he hoped funding decisions could also be fast-tracked, where possible, but said it was crucial that the stakeholders ensured connectivity projects were done properly. “We don’t want to rush through this, we want to make sure it’s done properly as well,” Orb said. Later in the conference, Brian McCullagh, the business development director of Sudbury-based telecom Vianet, told a panel on the government’s role in addressing the challenges of the rural digital divide that all three levels of government needed to partner with communities and telecom providers, rather than just providing funding. “We need to sit down and figure out ways to deliver this service quickly, efficiently, from getting access to government owned lands, getting access to abandoned rail trails and things like that, and find out solutions so we can do this in a cost effective manner and roll it out quickly,” McCullagh said. According to the CRTC’s 2019 Communications Monitoring Report, just 40.8 per cent of rural Canadian households — and 85.7 per cent of Canadian households — had access to an internet service at speeds that met the universal service objective. Cybera policy analyst Imran Mohiuddin agreed with McCullagh that funding wasn’t necessarily enough to bridge the digital divide on its own, stating the regulatory environment also needed to be examined as well. Asked by moderator Greg O’Brien about mapping, McCullagh also told the conference that the hexagon model led to some properties in a particular hexagon being able to access a 500 Mbps fibre connection while others did not have access to a broadband service at all. “I think a good way to look at projects going forward is what have you done? So if we can show here’s what we’ve done in the last two years in this area, we need funding now to extend beyond that to reach these other people that you should serve but really aren’t served, and I think that’s a good way to grow,” McCullagh said. Hexagon mapping, which divides the country into 25 square-kilometer sections, has been criticized for not being specific enough to accurately capture all areas lacking high-speed broadband infrastructure, including by the auditor general in a fall 2018 report. Fausto Iannialice, the director of the Ontario ministry of infrastructure’s broadband and digital strategy branch, said the experiences of rural communities, as well as mapping, should be taken into account when designing funding programs. Programs should start by having an “iterative conversation to really determine where the underserved and unserved communities are,” Iannialice said. “Data is great but data isn’t always perfect and sometimes you just have to walk through and understand what’s between the numbers to know where it is that we’re focusing our resources,” he said. -- With reporting by Adam Langenberg at alangenberg@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca CORRECTION: A previous version of this story referred to Maryam Monsef's title incorrectly.

Universal Broadband Fund applications to open in ‘coming days’: Monsef

News | June 8, 2020

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Universal Broadband Fund applications to open in ‘coming days’: Monsef

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