Ottawa puts $41M toward better Northern internet service

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/08/2021 (1742 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Close to 100 communities in Manitoba can look forward to better and more reliable internet service thanks to $41 million of funding from a couple of federal government programs announced on Wednesday.

In particular, a limited partnership between Cross Lake and Norway House is receiving $16.5 million to dramatically upgrade the internet infrastructure for those two large First Nations; however, those are effectively the only Northern communities that will benefit from the 11 projects that were awarded funding this week.

While the list did include a $6.5 million award to Broadband Communications North (BCN) to service 16 of the most remote Northern First Nations, that funding is only a stopgap to keep the existing high cost satellite service that those communities currently rely on functioning properly.

“High-speed internet service is essential to the success of everyone living and working in rural communities across Manitoba. This will help create jobs, improve access to health care and online learning services, and keep people connected to their family, friends and loved ones,” said Dan Vandal, Minister of Northern Affairs and MP for St. Boniface.

The federal government is committing to making sure that 98 per cent of Canadians have access to high speed Internet by 2026 and 100 per cent by 2030.

But when it comes to places like Northern Manitoba, there is still a lot of work to be done.

Jason Neepin, the newly appointed executive director of BCN, said the funding it received is important and will help “keep the lights on” in places like Tadoule Lake, Shamattawa and God’s Lake, but it is far from an ideal solution.

“We understand the solution for the North is more difficult, but what the government is doing right now is kicking the can down the road until a better solution is found,” he said.

BCN’s funding will be used to buy transponder space on the satellites to ensure there is appropriate broadband capacity for those communities’ nursing stations, band offices, schools and a few retail accounts.

As for Cross Lake and Norway House, the impact to those community will be significant. Norway House itself its investing $2.6 million of its own funds in the project that has been in the planning stages for more than three years.

Norway House Cree Nation chief, Larson Anderson, said a few years ago it was approached by Perimeter Aviation about the possibility of setting up a call centre staffed by Cree-speaking customer service people. Anderson said they could not pursue the opportunity because of unreliable internet service.

“We believe this announcement will change our nation is a similar fashion as when the road got pushed in to the community in 1973 and we were able to travel to the rest of the world,” he said. “I feel this will have the same impact especially for the youth of our nation.”

Most of the project funding that was announced on Wednesday comes from the Connect to Innovate program that is about to wind down. It has been replaced by the federal government’s $2.75 billion Universal Broadband Fund.

RFNow, the Virden-based Internet service provider (ISP) received $9.24 million from that program to build fibre-to-the-home services for 47 small communities in south and southwestern Manitoba including three First Nations.

Its CEO, Chris Kennedy said the company would invest matching funds and he expects to have all of the work done by the end of 2022.

RFNow was a proponent of a previous project that had received significant funding from Connect to Innovate to build high speed Internet connections to many northern First Nations. But that funding was pulled after a lengthy internal dispute.

Dave MacKay, the executive director of an organization that represents many of the province’s smaller ISP’s said that it appears some of Wednesday’s announcement was reallocation of some of that funding.

“I think RFNow got the short end of the stick before, so it’s good to see that at least the funding is staying in Manitoba,” he said.

The communities that will receive upgraded service from all 11 of the projects have varying levels of quality of service at this point.

Other than BCN’s satellite project for the North, the rest of the projects are to build at least fibre optic service to the community which could then service individual customers in the community wirelessly.

Norway House’s Larson, said with the capacity that is being built for his community there will be the potential to use that infrastructure to expand to other communities, for instance to the Island Lake region.

Larger funding awards from the Universal Broadband Fund are not expected until the end of the year or early next year.

 

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca