Northwestel redirecting Broadband Fund cash to rebuild network after fire damage in N.W.T.

Northwestel has been given permission by the CRTC to use money it received from the Broadband Fund to connect communities up north to instead rebuild fibre infrastructure in the Northwest Territories damaged by wildfires last summer. Northwestel spokesperson Matthew Bossons told The Wire Report in an interview Monday that the newly built network infrastructure in Enterprise, near the territory’s southern border and Alberta, was destroyed by fires in the community last August — in addition to homes and other unrelated infrastructure. He called it “a pretty exceptional case for us.” “It was a devastating event for a whole multitude of reasons, but of course, from our standpoint, it was also a real tragedy that it took out that infrastructure shortly after it was completed.” The money for Northwestel’s Enterprise rebuild comes from a yet-to-be-used portion of cash it received for a project worth up to $17 million, plus an extra $6.9 million it received due to inflation “and other factors,” to connect 18 communities in the Northwest Territories to broadband service, including Enterprise. While Northwestel can use the broadband funding to rebuild its fibre-to-the-home network in Enterprise, the CRTC said it expects the company — and other telecoms — to consider how they can improve the resiliency of their networks “in ways that anticipate future environmental disasters of a similar nature.” In its decision released Aug. 12, the CRTC said companies should make an effort to consider from the first stages of their network builds onward how to avoid and deal with potential damage from drastic weather events “given their increased frequency and regularity.” The Enterprise fire was not the first to hit Northwestel’s infrastructure. Bossons said there was “a lot of damage” affecting infrastructure last summer in both N.W.T. and Alberta. He said the necessary repairs, which are largely completed in those cases, made for a multi-million-dollar undertaking and are being funded entirely by Northwestel. Planning for future disasters As far as planning for similar disasters goes, Bossons said Northwestel and others in Canada’s North have long had redundancy in mind. “The level of redundancy you’d have in downtown Toronto or downtown Vancouver is huge, just because there’s cables running all over the place, and so if one goes down in a neighbourhood, it’s not hard to reroute that traffic down another route,” he explained. “That’s not the case up here — we’re talking about huge, huge distances, really rugged landscapes, in tiny communities that are located, for lack of a better term, in some cases out in the middle of nowhere.” Bossons said Northwestel has been working with provincial and territorial fire and emergency organizations as needed this summer to identify and protect critical infrastructure when fires occur, whether it be buildings, towers, or fibre cables. Bossons said there is an “emergency link” that’s been established from the Yukon to Alaska and Seattle to push traffic onto in the event of a service cut. For future redundancy, Bossons offers the example of the Canada North Fibre Loop project, which he said would greatly increase resiliency in the event of these natural disasters, whether there are fires, floods, or landslides. The project involves a fully redundant fibre network for internet, cellular, and other telecom services for residents, businesses, and governments in the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, according to Northwestel. It is to be made up of three fibre networks independently owned by the governments of the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Northwestel. “We expect that this will provide a much-needed alternate path for communities, both in N.W.T. and the Yukon later this year. It will allow us to have redundant routes to help buttress communities that may be experiencing outages,” Bossons said. He’s also hopeful another redundancy project will go through in the future: a plan to run fibre cables under the N.W.T.’s Great Slave Lake to offer redundancy to people in the Yellowknife region. He said that project is in the ideation phase, with no formal commitment to build it as of yet — “that’s something for down the road, hopefully.” Northwestel sale to Sixty North Unity underway A group of Indigenous communities from the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut — all part of a consortium called Sixty North Unity — announced a proposed deal in June to buy Northwestel from BCE Inc. in a deal worth almost $1 billion. “As Indigenous people, we have long believed we are best placed to make the necessary decisions affecting services in our communities,” said Sixty North Unity representative Tiffany Eckert-Maret in a news release on the deal in June. “The acquisition of Northwestel will give us the autonomy to make those investments and choices to serve our telecommunications needs into the future.” When asked for an update on the sale, Bossons told The Wire Report Monday that finalization of the deal is still ongoing. “Given its size and complexity, this transaction will take several months to complete. But we are confident that updates will be provided as the closing date is finalized. We remain really excited about what this new chapter means for both us and northern Canada.” Northwestel must file a project completion report to the CRTC within 90 days of the end of the Enterprise rebuild and services being offered. The CRTC said it will continue to consider similar funding change requests on a case-by-case basis. – Reporting by Hannah Daley at hdaley@thewirereport.ca with files from Phalen Tynes-MacDonald at pcreed@thewirereport.ca

Northwestel redirecting Broadband Fund cash to rebuild network after fire damage in N.W.T.

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By Hannah Daley
| August 12, 2024

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Northwestel redirecting Broadband Fund cash to rebuild network after fire damage in N.W.T.

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