Feds boost Universal Broadband Fund by $750M

The federal government announced the launch of its long-awaited Universal Broadband Fund Monday morning, increasing the funding by $750 million and the number of Canadians it aims to have connected by 2026 from 95 per cent to 98 per cent. The fund also includes $150 million dedicated toward a "Rapid Response Stream" which is open immediately and will seek to fund "shovel-ready projects" that can be completed by November 2021. The announcement didn’t specify a deadline for the rest of the projects to be completed. "Government officials stand ready to assess applications as we receive them," Rural Economic Development Minister Maryam Monsef said at a Monday morning press conference. Monday's launch came after months of delay on the project, which was initially announced in the 2019 federal budget, declared as being accelerated in April, and then tipped in June to launch in the "coming days." Whereas the program has previously been described as a $1.7 billion fund, that number included $600 million in funding for Telesat Holdings Inc., allocated in July 2019 in a memorandum of understanding with the company. Monday's announcement of $1.75 billion, rather, includes $750 million in new money, while Telesat's $600 million has been carved out into a new standalone agreement with the company to provide capacity for internet service providers in the most rural areas like the North. In September's throne speech which initiated Parliament's return, the government reiterated its rural broadband commitment, and promised to “accelerate the connectivity timelines and ambitions" of the fund. Those accelerated timelines and ambitions appear to come in the form of increased targets for how many Canadians will be connected to high-speed internet, and by when. In Monday's announcement, the government said it would increase its 2026 target for the percentage of Canadians who have access to service meeting the CRTC’s basic service standard, while maintaining its goal of 100 per cent connectivity by 2030. Opposition MPs both criticized the government delay in launching the fund Monday. NDP innovation critic Brian Masse said that the program is coming too late. "It’s unfortunate that it took kids doing homework online in their school’s parking lots and small businesses suffering during a pandemic for the Liberals to realize that their failure to bring broadband prices down and boost access has real consequences," Masse said in a statement. He said Monday’s announcement "still gives no clear plan of delivery or timeline." Conservative rural economic development critic John Nater said that "while the Trudeau Liberals have repeatedly promised to improve internet connectivity, they have failed miserably to deliver." In what Monsef described as a separate stream running parallel to the rapid response program, the UBF will also have funding for "large strategic projects of impact," in partnership with a previously-announced $2 billion fund from the Canadian Infrastructure Bank. The announcement also allocates $50 million for projects in Indigenous communities. It will also include a tool called Pathfinder, which will guide applicants through the process. Monsef also reiterated what she told the House Industry committee back in May, that the oft-criticized hexagon model for determining rural eligibility would not be part of the UBF. "We heard that our maps needed to be more precise. The hexagon model is gone, and our maps are even more precise now," Monsef said at Monday's press conference. Applications for the $150 million Rapid Response Stream of the UBF will close on Jan.15, 2021, and applications for the $50 million fund for projects in Indigenous communities will close a month later on Feb. 15, 2021. Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada (ISED) said in an emailed statement that it would be accepting applications for large-scale projects until Feb. 15, 2021 as well, but that "future intake processes may be announced in the future." At Monday’s press conference, Bains said Telesat plans to launch its low earth orbit satellite (LEOS) constellation in late 2021, to become available by 2022. At the press conference Bains also pointed to a move announced Friday to provide Starlink — the satellite division of Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — with access to spectrum, alongside the Telesat agreement. "We feel the competition from all these different service providers will enable the price points to go down and be more affordable for Canadians, particularly in rural and remote communities," Bains said. The UBF will follow the Connect to Innovate program, which came under criticism from the auditor general last fall. In a technical briefing for reporters following the press conference, senior officials from ISED said that the new UBF had taken criticism of the Connect to Innovate program's application process on board. "We took that to heart. These are large broadband infrastructure projects, so it is still complex to apply, but we've developed a pathfinder service to help applicants. Here it is especially smaller, municipal, Indigenous potential applicants that can benefit from this service," a senior ISED official said, adding that the new mapping system will speed up the application process. Responding to a question about how the UBF differs from previous rural broadband funding programs like Connect to Innovate, the official also said that the UBF now includes the CRTC's 50/10 speed targets. In response to the UBF announcement, Canadian Internet Registration Authority CEO Byron Holland said in an emailed statement that the government should implement a measurement framework to assess the program’s success. "Going forward, we urge the government to develop a measurement framework that ensures publicly-funded projects actually deliver the speeds they promise so that rural and remote residents don't continue to be left behind," Holland wrote. In the technical briefing, ISED officials said that the department is still considering reporting requirements, including an annual report, and that it will launch a program tracker for the UBF projects in future. Meanwhile, OpenMedia digital rights campaigner Erin Knight said in an emailed statement that while the organization is pleased with the program's launch, it fails to prioritize smaller stakeholders like local and Indigenous-led community buildout applications. "Without this, we could see the majority of government funds go to Big Telecom and further entrench their oligopoly," Knight wrote in a statement. "The supports announced today for non-incumbent UBF applicants are a good step, but will only go so far.” Canadian Communication Systems Alliance CEO Jay Thomson said in a press release his organization was also looking to find out how smaller providers would benefit. "We are particularly interested in learning how the new fund will support smaller, locally-based providers which best know the needs of their rural communities as they are based in those communities and are already working in the field,” Thomson said. An ISED official said in the technical briefing that while the UBF was looking to partner with other funding bodies like provinces and municipalities, "that does not mean that if there's no co-funding or a relatively small amount of co-funding, that applications shouldn't come forward," adding that the program can fund up to 75 per cent of a project "in most areas" and 90 per cent for projects in Indigenous and very remote areas. — Reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and Tim Forster at tforster@thewirereport.ca and editing by Tim Forster

Feds boost Universal Broadband Fund by $750M

News | November 9, 2020

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Feds boost Universal Broadband Fund by $750M

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