Rural communities, First Nations getting hooked up

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This article was published 01/12/2021 (486 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than a year after Manitoba Hydro Telecom stopped allowing any new developments and more than six months after the initial announcement that Xplornet Communications had been selected to manage that network, a deal is finally in place between Xplornet and the province and the stop sell order has been lifted.

Xplornet announced on Tuesday that it would be investing more than $200 million over the next two-plus years to build the infrastructure that will bring high speed internet to 350 rural communities and 30 First Nations.

It is a development that will likely go a long way towards ending the broadband desert conditions that exist in many parts of rural and northern Manitoba.

Many communities have very little broadband capacity which means critical health care and education services are unreliable, at best.

Chris Ewen, mayor of the R.M. of Ritchot, said a recent call he was on with the Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) in Grande Pointe, just south of the Perimeter Highway (where Tuesday’s announcement was made), was dropped because of a poor broadband connection.

He said those sorts of conditions are “a detriment to government work, and a detriment for business and it’s incredible that this agreement will bring fibre optics” to so many communities.

The agreement means Xplornet will have access to the so-called dark fibre (unused or underutilized) of the Manitoba Hydro Telecom network that was originally built to connect the hydro utility’s generating stations.

Clarence Easter, chief of Chemawawin Cree Nation, said his community invested about $1.8 million one and a half years ago to enhance the very slow internet speeds in his community, about 470 kilometres north of Winnipeg, but has been waiting since then to be able to finish off the project.

“This is going to produce life-altering change to our community.”– Clarence Easter, chief of Chemawawin Cree Nation

“This is going to produce life-altering change to our community,” he said.

Reg Helwer, the province’s minister in charge of central services, said more than 125,000 rural, remote and northern Manitoba homes and businesses will have new or improved modern broadband services and access to further technology for the next generations as a result of this agreement with Xplornet.

“As our way of life has changed during the course of the pandemic, access to virtual workplace and health-based services has become our new reality when it comes to succeeding and staying connected,” he said.

Both he and Bill Macdonald, Xplornet’s executive vice-president of business development, said the negotiations took as long as they did because of the complex nature of the technology and the issues at hand.

Macdonald said Manitoba is a major focus of attention for the company. In September it acquired Steinbach-based Swift High Speed to provide the actual construction services to start laying cable and eventually fibre to the home for many communities.

Dave MacKay, executive director of the Coalition of Manitoba Internet Service Providers, who has been very critical of the “stop-sell” order that has been in place, expressed optimism now that the agreement is in place.

He said the acquisition of Swift was an indication to him that Xplornet was on the right track in terms of actually getting the work done which is necessary to start servicing communities needing connectivity. He said the scope of the work will require collaboration with many parties including the province’s smaller ISPs who he represents.

“We have opened up a dialogue and already have a rapport with Xplornet and we are expecting to now have followup discussions about development plans and priorities,” he said. “So we are looking forward to sitting down with them to assist however and wherever that makes sense.”

The agreement may be the breakthrough that many underserviced communities have been waiting for. MacKay said the unnecessary halt in development was “paralyzing to our sector.”

Adrien Sala, the NDP’s critic for Manitoba Hydro, said while there is a great need to expand access to broadband services across the province, especially in rural and northern communities, he is not impressed with the way it is being handled.

“There is no reason why we need an American-owned company to help us do it, none at all,” he said. “We could build it ourselves and use the profits to keep Manitoba Hydro rates low.”

In 2020 Xplornet, based out of Woodstock, N.B., was acquired by Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, a New York-based private equity firm that manages about $25 billion in assets.

Sala believes the agreement is part of the Progressive Conservative government’s inclination to privatize Crown assets.

Helwer said, “We were very conscious that the assets remain with Manitoba Hydro.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca