Alberta invests nearly $400 million in rural broadband rollout

The province of Alberta will spend $390 million over four years to provide broadband service to rural, remote and Indigenous communities, it was announced Wednesday. Premier Jason Kenney and Service Alberta Minister Nate Glubish made the announcement at a library in Innisfail, Alta. Last year the province had budgeted $150 million and had received matching funds from the federal government. The provincial government is again seeking matching funds for the additional $240 million announced Monday. The plan is to have the province fully wired by 2026-2027. “Within four years we’ll be very close, we’ll be at 99 per cent of households and communities having achieved the federal CRTC definition of what constitutes an acceptable and reliable high-speed internet service standards,” Kenney told a news conference. The current CRTC standards are 50 Megabits per second (Mbps) for downloading and 10 Mbps for uploading. Glubish stated that different technologies will be deployed to roll out the infrastructure. “There is no one size fits all solution we are going to be looking for every opportunity to bring fibre where it makes sense. We also know there will have to be fixed wireless in other communities that are more remote and we also know that in the farthest reaches of the province, we will need to be open to using low earth orbit satellite technology,” he remarked. The province expects to create 1,500 jobs during the infrastructure deployment and says within three years about 2,000 long-term service industry positions will be created. Annual GDP is projected to rise anywhere from $500 million to $1.7 billion. Alberta’s agriculture sector should see growth of five per cent in GDP, according to a news release from Service Alberta. As it currently stands, 67 per cent of rural and remote areas do not have access to reliable high-speed internet. That figure jumps to 80 per cent in Indigenous communities. Métis communities have no access at all. Across the province, about half a million people are not served by high-speed internet. Glubish wants the federal government to make policy changes that could facilitate more broadband rollout across the country. “There are certain policy areas that are in the jurisdiction of the federal government that could use some common sense updates and reform to help eliminate unnecessary barriers to private sector investment and the specific one I’m referring to is on spectrum policy,” the minister said. He referred especially to telecoms holding onto spectrum without using it and buying spectrum solely for the purpose of reselling it. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mandate letter to Innovation Minister Philippe-François Champagne deliberately targeted the “use it or lose it” strategy. – Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca.

Alberta invests nearly $400 million in rural broadband rollout

News | March 2, 2022

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Alberta invests nearly $400 million in rural broadband rollout

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