BRACEBRIDGE, Ont. – It’s taken a while to dole out the millions of dollars the federal government set aside to fund broadband expansion to rural areas in Canada.
That has led some telecom industry insiders to tell Cartt.ca Industry Canada, which is in charge of the Broadband Canada fund, is having difficulty finding enough places which remain unserved by Canadian broadband providers upon which to spend the money.
However, after Saturday’s announcement of the third wave of funding, $152 million of the $225 million available has been spoken for and Minister Tony Clement told Cartt.ca in an interview Saturday the reason it’s taken this long is that the federal government wants to make sure it doesn’t trample any regions where broadband providers are already serving rural Canadians (although broadband is defined at 1.5 Mbps).
“It’s true it took us a while to get the mapping right because at the start of the program in 2009 when it was announced, the first thing I wanted to do was get more accurate mapping so that we were not overlapping with other providers who were already up to 1.5 Mbps,” he said.
“So the mapping actually illustrated some areas we thought were ripe for providing broadband were actually covered,” added the Minister, “so it’s a good thing we did the mapping. But that process is now complete and we feel pretty confident we’re doing areas that need to be done.
“The other thing is we decided to concentrate first on areas that were the most removed from where other ISPs were already operating. That’s why in round one we had a lot of stuff going on in Nunavut and Northern Manitoba, places like that which were not likely to be covered any time soon, but as we get into the later rounds, we’re getting closer and closer to major urban areas… places that are surrounded by areas that are covered but for whatever reason have not had that advantage yet.”
However, with service providers delivering broadband in some remote and rural markets already (many are served by independent cable operators and non-profit network operators, for example) and with the CRTC looking to potentially add broadband to the incumbent telcos’ obligation to serve for all regions – and maybe even set higher speed targets (not to mention the $421-million-plus deferral account meant for rural broadband), does this program mesh with all that, or add confusion?
“That was the whole purpose of the mapping. I asked those very questions and Industry Canada went to work – and not with just our own say-so – it was working with Bell or Telus or Rogers or whomever and asking for up-to-date, accurate information on where their coverage starts and where it ends so that we can fill in some of the gaps and we would not be overlapping their service,” added Clement.
And this took longer than hoped.
“There have been a lot of cooks stirring the broth but at the end of the day we have identified 250,000 households that were without broadband – the basic broadband – which could be as high as 750,000 people who are now covered.”
There has been no deadline set on the announcement of the next round of funding and while the federal government’s overall stimulus plan has a deadline of March 31, 2011, this Broadband Canada portion has been extended until the end of 2011.
