Pledge for better internet hits home in slow-speed Manitoba

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This article was published 20/03/2019 (1855 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The Liberal government’s promise to connect every household to high-speed internet by 2030 has major implications for Manitoba, which is one of the least-connected provinces.

Tuesday’s federal budget includes a pledge to bring high-speed connections to 90 per cent of Canadian homes by 2021, and all of them by 2030.

That task will be particularly hard in Manitoba — even in communities around Winnipeg — said Rob Barlow, head of WireIE, a Toronto firm that installs Internet hook-ups in rural areas.

“Manitoba’s one of the most under-served markets in Canada,” said Barlow, who is part of a years-long project, called Wekitowak, to bring fibre-optic Internet from Brandon north to Churchill by 2021.

Chris Kennedy, the chief operating officer of Virden-based firm RFNow, is leading that project, which aims to connect 72 communities and reserves through 3,000 kilometres of fibre optic cables, largely following Manitoba Hydro lines.

“For the government, it’s a balancing act, between funding where private investment doesn’t make sense” and areas where the state shouldn’t interfere in an active market, he said.

Kennedy said it’s obvious the north was too sparsely populated for the private sector, though it’s harder to make such a call about the Interlake and places east of Lake Winnipeg. Meanwhile, the private market has targetted the area around Brandon and southeast Saskatchewan.

“There’s a lot of geography to cover,” he said. “Sometimes you go 50 kilometres with no customers at all, and you have to cover that investment.”

The Liberals have pegged the cost of giving all households access to high-speed Internet from $5 billion to $6 billion, by way of grants to help launch low-orbit satellite connections. But Barlow estimates Canada needs closer to $9 billion to connect homes when faster broadband arrives in their area.

“There’s a lot of work that still has to be done, even when you get fibre to a community,” he said. “The last mile’s the issue.”

Barlow also said better broadband connections would likely improve Manitoba’s spotty cellular reception. That’s because mobile companies would have incentive to connect cellphone towers to fibre connections, instead of pinging through a chain of towers.

A report this month by the mobile-data analytics firm Tutela found that Manitoba has the worst overall mobile connections in Canada, using its own calculation that looks at speed and quality. While Telus met a score of 75 per cent, the other main carriers fell short of Tutela’s metric for consistent quality.

The firm said part of the issue with both cellphone and landline connections in Manitoba is latency, with most Internet traffic having to reach servers on either coast of the country. That makes connections almost 20 per cent worse than most provinces during complex tasks such as a video call.

Even communities around Winnipeg are struggling to get adequate Internet connections, said Colleen Sklar, head of the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region.

Her group represents 18 communities from Selkirk to Niverville, many of which can’t get reliable broadband.

“The capital region (has) a huge issue with access to high-speed Internet,” said Sklar, whose own daughter has had issues completing homework using their slow-loading connection.

Her group has almost finished a proposal for public-private partnerships to encourage providers to install connections in areas they’ve so far decided aren’t worth the cost.

“When the (federal) funding does come through, we’re ready to get rolling,” she said. “We really hope that Manitoba receives the share of funding that we so desperately need.”

Sklar said agricultural areas need reliable Internet to keep up with developments such as crop management and automated equipment. Barlow made that same point in urging Ottawa to allocate adequate cash.

“I think Manitoba should get more; it’s the bread box of agriculture, it’s our future.”

The lack of foreign competition means only a small number of Internet providers are in the market so prices remain high. Barlow warned that this could imperil the Liberal government’s goals because of the high cost of connecting homes to new broadband.

“There have been so many projects all over the world (where) these projects just didn’t go anywhere because there’s so much more (needed) to operate them.”

Internet advocacy group OpenMedia hailed the Liberals for setting benchmarks but urged them to provide more details about how the funding will roll out.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca