Morden to offer free, high-speed internet to residents
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/04/2018 (2776 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The City of Morden is about to start offering free high speed Internet service to its residents.
That’s right. You read that correctly. Free. High-speed. Internet. In. Morden.
It is likely the first city in the country to offer such a service free to its residents.
And the community-owned service, called Morenet, is not going to be a slow, clunky experience, In fact, it is being touted as one of the first 5G Internet service providers in Canada with speeds of 100Mbps upload and download and higher. It expects to offer full 1Gbps service by 2021.
Morden Mayor Ken Wiebe said that after hearing complaints from residents of the city of 8,000 about the poor high speed Internet service that was available, the city started researching alternatives about four years ago.
He announced the project at his state of the city address on Thursday to the Morden Chamber of Commerce
“Governments at all levels continually are pushing the fact that access to the Internet is an essential service,” he said. “We are taking it seriously.”
He said the calculation is that the equipment and set-up expense will be about $350,000 to provide the infrastructure to service all 3,500 homes in the city.
For the past four months about 30 homes have been testing out the system and Wiebe said it has delivered “everything we were told it would and more.”
The southern Manitoba city contracted with Infotec Manitoba for technical support and Wiebe said they are finalizing an agreement with a company to do the installations.
While homeowners will have to pay an installation fee, the city is intending to provide the on-going Internet service at no cost.
“We believe the way the system sits now we can supply the service at no real additional cost,” said Wiebe. “That is our belief.”
The city already owns two towers located at the Access Event Centre and at City Hall that had been used for emergency communications. The new high speed wireless system equipment has been hung on the existing towers.
At the outset, the system with those two towers operating will be able to service 1,400 homes. The plan is to have the further equipment installed by the end of August to be able to service the other 2,100 homes.
“We have libraries, roads, recreation centres … they are all essential services,” he said. “We are lumping it (high speed Internet) right into that.”
When asked if the additional expense to the city might mean taxes will go up, Wiebe said, “Taxes always go up for one reason or another.”
Morenet expects to be able to go live and start taking orders for installation by the beginning of May.
martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca