Internet connectivity in spotlight in Manitoba

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/04/2022 (1236 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In an interview during her visit to the Association of Manitoba Municipalities annual meetings in Brandon this week, Canada’s Rural Economic Development Minister, Gudie Hutchings, said that travelling across the country gives her the chance to hear from people on the ground if federal government projects are working in rural Manitoba as well as Newfoundland and Labrador, where she is from.

Like many people from rural Canada, she is enthusiastic about the quality of life and opportunities afforded to people who do not reside in the cities where most of us live.

Increasingly, those opportunities are growing thanks to the increased emphasis on development of high-speed internet services in places that did not have those services just a few years ago.

But she is very much aware of the digital divide that still exists, though perhaps not just how wide it is in Manitoba.

“Connectivity was an issue long before pandemic, but the pandemic ripped off the Band-Aid,” she said in an interview.

She said people in rural Canada tell her that connectivity is the No. 1 issue for their communities.

“We have a plan for that and the plan is working, she said. “We are going to have 98 per cent of Canada connected with affordable reliable high-speed internet by 2026.”

And in fact Ottawa’s stated plan is to have 100 per cent of the country hooked up by 2030.

It’s not too cynical to bet that many Northern Manitoba communities are probably not going to make it into that 98 per cent bundle.

It seems like there has been one mismanagement, over-promise and technical delay after another leaving many communities in Manitoba — especially Northern First Nations — very disappointed.

Despite the fact there are plenty of innovative, enterprising projects that have been built and/or are underway it seems Manitoba is perpetually on its heels.

Over the last few months the federal government has signed partnership agreements with Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, B.C. and Newfoundland and Labrador to share costs to support projects that will improve access to high-speed internet in rural, remote and Indigenous communities.

No such funding partnership has been agreed to with Manitoba.

In 2018 a consortium of First Nations and a private sector Internet service provider (ISP) won a $55-million award from the federal government’s Connect to Innovate program that was going to connect 72 remote communities.

But infighting and bureaucratic mismanagement scuttled that one.

As connectivity and the digital divide started to become an obvious issue, many small ISPs in Manitoba started tapping into thousands of kilometres of unused fibre-optics that Manitoba Hydro Telecom (MHT) had installed to connect its generating stations.

The so-called dark fibre is a key Internet trunk line that ISPs need to use for many of the remote communities they are working with.

But in September 2020 Manitoba Hydro halted any new business on MHT while it sought a qualified third-party entity to manage that network. That’s not to say it broke the internet but it did exacerbate what was becoming a glaring problem in many rural and remote communities in the province.

In its official request for qualifications — that eventually led to Xplornet finally striking a deal with Hydro to manage MHT in December 2021 — the province noted there are 800 communities and transportation corridors that don’t have access to reliable high-speed connections and are either dependent on satellite for internet access and/or have internet speeds that are far slower than what is commonplace in urban centres.

A 2019 CRTC report noted that while 31 per cent of First Nations across the country have access to high-speed internet, only 1.8 per cent of First Nation communities in Manitoba do.

Manitoba ranked among the lowest in many demographic segments regarding access to broadband, but Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador and the territories all scored zero per cent regarding connectivity for First Nations.

Xplornet’s presence in the game has been welcomed by many of the smaller ISPs who are more inclined to do the hard work for the low volume challenging customer bases that the huge telcos just won’t do.

Xplornet has acquired a couple of those smaller players in Manitoba in the last year and many say they would much rather have a company like Xplornet helming the MHT network than Bell or Shaw, for example.

But progress remains slow. Xplornet could not immediately flip a switch and activate projects that have been in abeyance.

In the meantime, Hutchings said, “Trust me… we will make sure that no part of Manitoba is left unserved.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca