By Ken Kelley
COULD SOME OF CANADA’S rail lines and dormant ones which have become rail trails be important to helping unlock rural broadband connectivity in underserved parts of the country?
This was one of several ideas put forward during a panel discussion on the role of governments at Canada’s Rural and Remote Broadband Conference series, which moved to an online format due to the Covid-19 crisis.
Moderated by Cartt.ca publisher and editor Greg O’Brien, the panel of experts included representatives from provincial and local government, and two operators. The guests provided a broad scope of varying perspectives from regions that each have their own unique sets of challenges in getting rural Canadians connected.
Brian McCullagh, director of business development at Vianet in Sudbury, Ontario, said although his company has successfully built its own rural fibre infrastructure over the last 12 years, connecting rural Canada is a matter that requires the involvement and co-ordination of all three levels of government.
“This needs to be about more than funding,” McCullagh said. “We need to be partners. We need to sit down and figure out how to deliver service quickly and efficiently. From getting access to government-owned lands and to abandoned rail trails, we need to find solutions we can do this in a cost-effective manner and roll it out quickly.”
McCullagh said his company has previously explored the idea of running fibre lines along rail trails or decommissioned rail lines but it proved to be too expensive because the railroads themselves stand in the way.
“Those lines would be a great way to plow fibre in quickly. It would be cost-effective and a lot of these trails run through these small communities that need broadband. But what we’re finding is the rail companies have kept underlying rights to that region and if we want to go there, they want to get paid. I think the feds have to step in and meet with these rail companies to say, ‘We have to find a way to get these telecom companies onto these rail trails at a low cost’.”
Looking at things on a provincial level, McCullagh acknowledged provinces have assets that could be leveraged in a bid to expedite the rural broadband rollout but said there still remains roadblocks preventing this from happening.
“The province has assets, they have power and they have towers that are not fully loaded. They have the capacity, so how do you get companies like ours on those towers quickly to deliver service in those rural areas? In Ontario, we do have an issue with Hydro One [where] access to poles is pretty well impossible because they don’t meet engineering standards. The cost to a company like ours to replace that pole just makes it a non-starter to be on those poles. Therefore, we have to go underground, which is a higher cost. Then it becomes, how do we work with Hydro One to alleviate that issue.”
McCullagh said the major deterrent for companies seeking pole access was put into effect with Regulation 2204 Engineering Standard, which came into effect in 2004. He said the regulation put many poles in the province out of standard overnight.
“The next person who wants to attach has to pay the full cost to bring that pole up to standard. So what we’re seeing is anywhere from $25,000 to $70,000 that Hydro will charge us to change. When you look in a rural area, and there’s maybe 10 to 12 homes per kilometer, and they want 10 of the 20 poles changed at $10,000 [per pole], you can see there’s no business case for us to do that.”
“When we start to think about how we break down some of the barriers, access to assets, is absolutely important.” – Susan Stanford, province of B.C.
On a municipal level, McCullagh suggested municipalities not only speed up the permit process for telecom work, but they should also show some flexibility with respect to engineering standards, which could help companies like Vianet get cable in the ground quickly and cheaply.
Fausto Iannialice serves as the director of broadband deployment and digital connectivity at Ontario’s Ministry of Infrastructure, and said the provincial government has consistently sought to play an active role outside of funding.
“It’s about being a catalyst and a facilitator to solutions, and how we collaborate with folks such as Brian and municipalities,” Iannialice said. “What Ontario has attempted to do is to put aside the funding conversation and instead talk about looking at what assets we own and how do we make those available. Some of them are in use, some of them are not; some of them can be accessible and some of them are perhaps beyond repair, but just making that information available to see if there is a way to leverage an asset, which will in turn maybe expedite some of the deployment in these underserved and unserved areas.”
Iannialice said the province has worked closely with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, to talk about how it can provide support so local communities feel empowered to be more influential in determining where broadband projects are going.
In British Columbia, the province’s terrain can sometimes present a whole different set of issues for consideration, said Susan Stanford, ADM, technology, connectivity amd distributed growth with the Government of B.C.
“We have to manage around mountains and over mountains, some entries and water,” Stanford said. “Looking at existing infrastructure, working with industry, understanding where there’s power and being able to do those data overlays on assets that are required at the community and at the regional level helps us to engage with service providers as well as communities to map out regional plans.”
To help show how B.C. is helping get underserved or outlying communities online, Stanford cited the province’s “Connected Coast” project, a subsea fiber optic cable that will run down the entire coast of the province as well as the entire circumference of Vancouver Island. She said the project will connect almost 150 communities, a large portion of which are Indigenous communities.
“When we start to think about how we break down some of the barriers, access to assets, is absolutely important. But what happens when there’s nothing, and how do we actually get something out to these communities. These coastal communities will end up with a Gigabit service and will be future proofed, which is a lot more than what we could potentially do, doing microwave hops over mountains.”
Ray Orb, rural forum chair with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities and Reeve of Cupar, Sask., cited a number of successful partnerships, including one in Nova Scotia as well as one in B.C., where the FCM is working with ISPs to help connect rural communities. He also added there are too many people falling through the connectivity cracks in rural Canada.
“We’re asking for things… such as stacking eligibility requirements for municipalities that apply for these modes of funding, but also to be able to use that funding in concert with other companies and with the federal government as a partnership.” – Ray Orb, FCM and SARM
“We’ve even challenged the CRTC map that shows where connectivity is, as we find it doesn’t last long enough and is only temporary,” Orb said. “There are some days when people don’t have enough connectivity to be able to do much. We need to have at least 50/10 service. When we started pushing this five or six years ago, we were at five and one, but now we need more to be able to provide this as a service. We’re asking for things… such as stacking eligibility requirements for municipalities that apply for these modes of funding, but also to be able to use that funding in concert with other companies and with the federal government as a partnership.
“I think if we do that, we’re going to start to get out into the rural area. It’s frustrating because we haven’t seen much action on the rural side, and a lot of ways it’s inhibiting what’s happening in rural Canada,” he said.
“The municipalities are responsible for the promotion of the partnerships because we know that we need this. We know it’s a necessity and through these partnerships, working with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, I think we can make a big difference and I think it’s something need to do now. That’s why we’re still pushing the federal government to release some funding from the universal broadband fund,” said Orb.
In Alberta, Imran Mohiuddin, a policy analyst at Cybera, points out his province already has a publicly-funded fibre backbone, the SuperNet, which connects upwards of 4,200 schools, hospitals, libraries, government and municipal offices (and is now operated by Bell Canada). “While the SuperNet was formed with a mandate to improve last mile connectivity, we haven’t really seen that happen,” he said. “One of the reasons I think is there’s a kind of gray area in provincial governments moving into broadband deployment, which is typically a federal jurisdiction. In the case of Alberta, at the same time the provincial government was funding the SuperNet, the CRTC was simultaneously directing rural broadband funding, but that money was being directed to the ISPs to create a backbone parallel to the SuperNet, which is a duplication of infrastructure.”
Cybera is a not-for-profit which operates Alberta’s Optical Regional Advanced Network, known as CyberaNet, which connects universities, colleges, schools, not-for-profits, and business incubators to one another.
Asked about the viability of community broadband models, McCullagh discussed a partnership Vianet formed with York Region in Ontario to create a fibre network for government, which in turn was subsequently rolled out to customers.
“That [partnership] makes it viable for us to invest our money without asking the province or the feds for money,” McCullagh said, adding although customers still need to put up a substantial sum to get connected, the partnership between Vianet and York Region has showed expanding this way can be viable.
In B.C., Stanford said the province instituted a regulation change for municipalities that allows them to invest in and own their digital infrastructure, whereas previously, they couldn’t.
“We’re also seeing rural communities really begin to embrace municipal fibre themselves. The City of Nelson… ran their own fibre within the community years ago, which meant they were digitally ahead of other rural communities. But the relationship with the ISP was strained because they had the primary core of the town. They’ve now struck a unique way on how to partner with the service provider and are now a 5G-ready rural community; they’ll be 5G-ready at the same time as downtown Vancouver. I think there are a lot of mechanisms out there and the way that communities can be empowered to be an active part of that partnership is absolutely key.”
