Clearcable Summit
HAMILTON – The CRTC’s basic service obligation hearing often bogged down in consumer minutiae centering on what those in rural areas “should” be using with a bigger/better broadband connection potentially funded by the public purse or funds pulled from contributions by network owners (which, of course, come from the monthly bills paid by all of us).
Are we talking about rolling out deeper, faster connectivity just so that everyone down every last country road can stream the new season of Orange Is The New Black in 4K? My answer (in my head anyway) was: “Who cares? That’s censorship. People should be able to do what they want with their connections.” There were some who did emphasize how important broadband will very soon be to businesses in rural areas, especially farms, but it received short shrift in coverage of the hearing (including ours).
It’s a shame that University of Guelph researcher Dr. Helen Hambly had not appeared before the CRTC to explain the Rural and Regional Broadband Study (R2B2) she is helping lead.
She appeared this week in Hamilton at the Clearcable Technology Summit, an excellent conference run annually by Clearcable Networks, a Canadian company which serves small and mid-sized network operators all around the world, to talk about how the lack of real-time cloud connectivity in rural areas will soon be a major problem for the people who provide us with the food we eat.
Dr. Hambly told attendees about the growing trend towards precision agriculture, where farms big and small are beginning to interconnect their equipment and other technology – and how farmers are doing things like outfitting their dairy cattle or chickens with devices which monitor the animals. In some areas, cattle have chips embedded within them and farmers are making use of the data to make their operations more efficient and increase yields.
Precision agriculture shows that “context is changing for food and agriculture,” she said. The term also includes how combines and other machinery will soon not need drivers, or can be driven remotely and farmers around the world, crunching big data, can automatically trade information to spread best practices farther, wider and faster. Digital technology is also being deployed around the world for water and fertilizer management, too, but it only works best if there is broadband connectivity to help drive it.
Right now, reliable broadband remains a challenge for most farmers, said Dr. Hambly.
With no or slow connectivity plus no easy access to the cloud, those farmers are frustrated in their need to improve. Right now, said Hambly, about 5-10% of Ontario farmers use new digital tools in their operations, and “we’re going to see 100-times growth in the nest three to five years,” she added.
“We’re seeing a total metamorphosis of the farm,” she continued. But without farther and wider and more robust broadband, those farmers remain stuck on the other side of the digital divide.
Clearcable also handed out their Broadband Service Provider of the Year award, too, to Mascon Cable of Salmon Arm, B.C. (see photo below) The company started in cable in 1982 and was one of the first in Canada to launch Zentih cable modems in the 1990s. They have since expanded into wireless and launched a call center this year to help provide tech support for other small systems. It also delivered the first 100Mbps services in their area this year. Left to right are Derrick Hansen (Technician, Mascon), Andrew Hofmann (Regional Director, Mascon), Rob McCann (President, Clearcable), and Malcolm Shattock (Technical Director, Mascon).
