High-speed internet necessity, not luxury

Opinion

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This article was published 03/06/2023 (828 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Many people head to the hinterlands to escape the city’s hustle and bustle and seek a slower-paced lifestyle.

They gladly leave the traffic jams behind, but many former urbanites couldn’t imagine life without high-speed internet, which opens the door to streaming television services, social-media websites or video-game platforms.

Tell that to the 17 per cent of Manitobans who, at the end of 2022, had yet to receive high-speed internet access, a rate that is second-worst in the country.

The statistic looks particularly woeful when compared with neighbouring Saskatchewan, which says 99 per cent of the province’s households can access high-speed internet through Sasktel, the provincially owned Crown corporation.

The federal government has targeted 2030 to have high-speed internet available to all Canadians, announcing a $3.2-billion package to make it happen.

The pledge rings hollow though when Manitobans confront Apple’s dreaded pinwheel, or Windows’ “blue circle of death,” both of which denote a lack of connectivity.

It’s especially galling for Indigenous people in Manitoba, many of whom live in remote areas of the province and have waited years for broadband service for the truly valuable services high-speed internet provides: prompt weather alerts that warn of tornadoes, blizzards or other calamities, connecting residents with health-care professionals without the need for costly trips to Winnipeg and giving students greater access to online educational materials.

Among those is Chemawawin Cree Nation, an Interlake community with 2,100 members located 470 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

“The service is definitely needed in the North, it’s essential… It should be a basic thing for all Manitobans.”–Chemawawin Chief Clarence Easter

“The service is definitely needed in the North, it’s essential,” Chemawawin Chief Clarence Easter said in a May 4 Free Press story. “It should be a basic thing for all Manitobans, actually. Everything is based on it — your health, your banking, how you get paid, how you watch a movie. Everything is internet now.”

Some people in the North use Starlink’s internet satellite service, which is operated by SpaceX, Elon Musk’s aeronautics company, but its pricetag is beyond the means of some rural users.

Chemawawin spent $1.8 million in 2020 to connect to Manitoba Hydro’s fibre-optic network, which the Crown agency built initially to communicate with and transmit data between its hydroelectric facilities. The Cree Nation aims to complete the final four kilometres of trench-digging in June.

Chief Easter attended a Manitoba government news conference in December 2021 when it announced a $200-million project by Xplornet Communications would provide high-speed internet and cellphone service to hundreds of rural communities and First Nations such as Chemawawin, using the Manitoba Hydro network.

The project is in limbo — and so is Chemawawin’s promised broadband link — almost 18 months later as Xplore Inc., (Xplornet’s new name) and Manitoba Hydro Telecom, which oversees Hydro’s fibreoptic business, squabble over invoices.

James Teitsma, Mantoba’s consumer protection and government services minister, says the three-year high-speed rollout is ahead of schedule, with 418 communities and 13 First Nations already hooked up.

This is little consolation to communities who continue to wait for Xplore and Manitoba Hydro Telecom to end their dispute before they to can join the vast majority of Canadians who are able to connect to high-speed internet and the services it offers.

The provincial government, Manitoba Hydro and the companies it deals with to expand internet coverage owe it to those living in rural areas to heighten their high-tech efforts.

Every day that Manitobans are unable to reap the benefits of proper internet service adds to the likelihood of those folks logging completely off from the province and signing on where broadband connection is a higher priority.