Exceeding the need for speed

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/03/2021 (1648 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Could last week’s announcement of the commitment to invest $260 million in broadband services to traditionally underserviced communities in southern Manitoba be a sign that the equity gap is closing in Manitoba when it comes to access to high-speed internet?

Winkler-based Valley Fiber Ltd. along with its majority owner Dutch Infrastructure Fund (DIF) is putting up $130 million and the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) is contributing the other half in the form of a long term, low-interest loan.

Hank Wall, the CEO and founder of Valley Fiber, is not saying yet which communities will benefit, but the plan calls for connecting close to 50,000 underserviced households and businesses by the end of 2024, which would effectively increase Valley Fiber’s customer base by five-fold.

It is a unequivocal vote of confidence in Valley Fiber and a testimony to the company’s aggressive, entrepreneurial approach after only about three years of operation in its current form.

It is all the more noteworthy in that it is CIB’s first investment in Manitoba and its first in the broadband sector, one of the targeted areas for the $35-billion fund’s three-year growth plan to invest $10 billion in economic stimulus that will be urgently needed in the post-pandemic years.

Ehren Cory, CIB’s chief executive officer, said the CIB continues to fund large transformational projects, but they take a while to mature. Projects like this one are the definition of shovel-ready. Wall said he has construction equipment standing by.

“We announced this on Friday and they will be doing construction this summer,” Cory said.

In its short history Valley Fiber has distinguished itself, wiring the entire city of Winkler and coming up with technological innovations that really only happen when you are starting from scratch (as opposed to the large telcos who have to continue to leverage their decades-old infrastructure.)

Martin Harder, the mayor of Winkler, said, “Our ability to partner with Valley Fiber made a huge difference to us in Winkler. It was like we went from the Dark Ages to the 21st century.”

He said the fact that Winkler has the excellent broadband service that is does has meant students have been able to handle distance education, industry has thrived, and job growth has boomed.

“Help-wanted signs litter the highway,” he said.

Last year, PC Magazine named Valley Fiber the second best ISP in the country. Wall said it is the only ISP in the country that actually guarantees speed.

“We don’t say speeds are ‘up-to,’ ” he said. “When you are on Valley Fiber you get what you pay for.”

Wall is passionate about the community building that his company’s service provides and there is no longer any debate about the societal value of access to high-speed internet, made that much more obvious during this past year.

The CIB funding is specifically for underserviced communities and Wall said if high-speed service is available, then Valley Fiber cannot use the CIB funds for that home.

But the successful funding for a region that is definitely not the worst off in the province, begs the question — where is the funding to address the broadband desert in northern Manitoba.

Cory is not oblivious to that challenging question, referring to Valley Fiber’s constituency as “middle-tier.”

Other regional ISPs in the province including the non-profit Broadband Communications North, which exclusively works with First Nation communities, and Virden-based RFNow, have plenty of experience planning projects for northern remote communities.

They know how challenging those projects can be — witness the trail of failed efforts in the past — even ones that secured federal funding.

Valley Fiber’s combination of a strong business plan and a deep-pocketed private sector partner makes it much easier for an institutional Crown lender like CIB to get on board.

But Cindy Burgess-Findlay, the interim executive director of Broadband Communications North, said at some point there has to be an acknowledgement that servicing remote rural communities — like most First Nations in northern Manitoba — cannot be done under the same economic conditions as elsewhere in the country.

“It is just hard to make a business case for working in the north,” she said. “Governments have to turn off some of their traditional thinking. It is clear that the telcos are not investing in the north. It is a different business case.”

Burgess-Findlay just finished applications for about $500 million worth of projects to the federal government’s new $1.75 Universal Broadband Fund, designed for just those scenarios. It will still take sophisticated planning, technical know-how and thankless dedication.

Chris Johnson, the CEO of RFNow, which spent more than a year unsuccessfully trying to wrangle a sprawling project in northern Manitoba that ostensibly had funding in place, said he’ll be keen to see where the $260 million gets spent.

“I still think our community friends in the north are the worst off of anyone in Canada,” he said. “I really hope to see whatever the next round of announcement are start to fill some of those gaps. They are in the most need.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca