High-speed internet initiative for rural residents missed mark, warden says
By Roberta Bell and Andrew Philips Orillia Packet & Times
The five-year program the County of Simcoe helped develop to deliver high-speed Internet to its rural residents missed the mark, says the warden.
“It did satisfy some needs, but it didn’t satisfy, you know, 85% of what we hoped we could get out of the program,” Gerry Marshall told The Packet & Times Friday, four days before it ends for good.
The experience is one Marshall said has prompted the county to re-evaluate its approach.
“How do you move forward in a more effective manner?” Marshall asked.
The County worked with Bell starting in 2009 on a service called WiMax, funded in part through federal and provincial dollars.
The county was eligible for up to $1 million through Ontario’s Rural Connections program, which was endorsed by the government of Canada.
The county’s IT director, Brian Smith, said WiMax served about 2,000 residents across the county during its run.
“There’s a need out there and the rural program was designed to fill that need. It obviously didn’t hit all the targets,” Marshall said.
For example, not all of the county’s rural residents could use the program.
Severn Township resident Anderson Charters said on his street, of the 22 homes, only four, his being one, could hook up to it.
While he’s paying for it for a few more days, it’s been spotty for the past two months and hasn’t worked at all for the past two weeks.
When Charters called about it, he was told Bell wouldn’t be servicing it any more because it was being decommissioned.
“I was told, ‘Under that program, we are not going to be fixing the problem,’” Charters said. “It’s very annoying; let me put it that way.”
When asked if he was going to stick with Bell, he said, depending on the options available to his home, he might not have a choice.
“I’m glad that I’m a BCE shareholder because the stock has done well. It pays a good dividend. I think we know why,” Charters said. “If our experience as a consumer with Bell is any indication why the company is as profitable as it is … Allow your readers to draw their own conclusions.”
Charters said if he switches to the replacement service, Turbo Hub, he understands he can have it for $50 a month, the same rate he pays for WiMax. The caveat is he’d have to sign a two-year contract or put $200 up front.
Smith said he has spoken to some residents who have opted for the new Bell service.
“They seem to be happy with it,” Smith said, adding he did hear from one former WiMax customer who can’t access the new service because he lives in a low-lying area with trees surrounding his property, “so it wouldn’t work.”
Smith said he forwarded the resident’s concerns to the Bell regional operations manager to make him aware of the issue.
“But, personally, I haven’t heard a lot of complaints,” he added.
Marshall is thinking bigger.
In this day and age, Internet is more or less an essential service, the warden said.
“Most households are probably accessing the Internet on a daily basis, if not two or three times a day,” he said. “We need to deliver that service.”
There’s one major Internet initiative on the horizon that could bring high-speed broadband to shutout areas while improving existing service elsewhere.
Initiated by the Western Ontario Wardens’ Caucus (a not-for-profit organization comprised of the heads of council representing 15 rural municipalities, including Simcoe County) and in partnership with the Southwest Economic Alliance, the SouthWestern Integrated Fibre Technology (SWIFT) project would build an ultra-high-speed fibre-optic regional broadband network for everyone in western Ontario.
SWIFT project lead Geoff Hogan, who lives in neighbouring Grey County, has been visiting county councils throughout the region over the past few months to try to drum up support and eventual partial funding for the estimated $240-million undertaking. He visited Simcoe County councillors last month in Midhurst.
The SWIFT plan would create fibre-optic connectivity accessible to 3.5 million people across 41,286 square kilometres by tying in with Internet exchange points in Toronto, St. Catharines and Windsor.
The proposed funding model would feature $160 million in federal and provincial money, $60 million from Internet service providers and $20 million from municipalities and other supporters.
Whether the federal, provincial and municipal dollars funnelled in rural broadband has been effective to date is debatable.
“As a country, we simply haven’t made the investment in something that’s necessary for the digital economy,” Charters said. “From our limited experience in this area, that’s the conclusion that I would have to draw.”
Charters has a publishing business in Orillia with his wife, Susan. If they wanted to run it out of their home, they wouldn’t be able to.
“We have to be in town. We could not run our business even three miles or three kilometres outside of the City of Orillia in Severn Township,” Charters said.
Right now, business decisions are guided by the private sector, Marshall said.
The private-public nature of the SWIFT program presents an opportunity for sustainability that could change that.
A portion of the monthly fee from the private sector will come back to the municipalities administering it, which can use that money to expand the fibre system.
“The economic lift that would occur as fibre gets driven further and further out is not insignificant,” Marshall said.
I live in rural Simcoe County and still have no access to useful internet.
When are we going to legislate private business to provide “all or none” services?
Internet providers seem to be waiting for the next influx of government cash while gorging on the low hanging fruit of urban service fees.
I too live In Simcoe County. We have a Rogers Turbo Hub. Very very expensive, the speed is good but usage is very limited and if you go over ..watch out your wallet will pain a lot, Rogers ,Bell and the like are ripping people off big time and nothing is being done about it.
John Messenger. Tiny, L9M0C6
The LTE services provided by Bell and Rogers are priced beyond the ability of any rural residence with teenagers or someone who likes to stream media to pay. The Inukshuk program has been abandoned, Bell and Rogers bought up all the 700 meg spectrum that was auctioned off recently leaving medium speed-slow ping satellite or high priced sim cards as the only Internet option available to rural Oro-Medonte residents. Internet providers seem to be more interested in collecting money from the government for infrastructure development than actually delivering. Ask your MP and MPP what they are doing about it.
I live between Bradford and Barrie. Fibre runs 2 km from my house up the 400 and 1/2 km the other way up the 10th sideroad. No DSL…too far from hub. Had inukshuk…but was sold off.
As a result the ONLY Internet I can get is the Cellular Flex packages from Bell/Telus etc. At $80 for 10 Gb/month, it’s NOT really a solution!
Was hopeful that the Taxpayer’s money put into Simcoe Rural Connections would have done more.
Oh well !?!
I was a happy customer of the WiMax service as I live outside of town. We have 13 residents on our dead end road. They notified me that it was ending and offered me the TurboHub for $50/mo with a very low restriction on use. Whereas with the WiMax service, for $23/mo I was getting 1.5 Mbps of download speed and it was working just fine. No outages, no tracking for overages. But with the TurboHub, they will continually gouge you for overages at ridiculous rates. Bell Alliant was given the contract for the WiMax service, yet discontinued it trying to say not enough people used it to justify. I beg to differ. I know for a fact that the entire time they offered it, they tried to deter new customers from signing on. I had to force them to take on 2 new customers. They were on the coverage map and they did get connected. But only after I intervened on their behalf and told them to send them the modem and let them try to get a signal. They hid it on their website, too, and even told many people they were not eligible. Bell cannot be trusted to be getting any more of our grant money, because they will provide limited service under the monetary promise, but instead steer the customers to a higher priced service, that doesn’t generate them more use for the increased price.
Will government ever step up? Bell and Rogers are allowed a monopoly they are not maintaining the right to continue owning. Government can take away the monopolies and contract out the fiber infrastructure that has to be on every street and rural road. Let’s get going and get a competitive edge in Ontario with amazing communication service everywhere.
Yes, enough is enough, Rogers keeps saying they will bring nearby cable infrastructure to our street. It has been 15 years of false (almost) promises.
There are lots of houses in our neighborhood on McLean Cres., Oro-Medonte. If we cannot get decent service, what chance do smaller communities or truly rural residents have.
We live in just west of Creemore, Ontario. We use Bell services for mobile, internet, home phone and tv. Their service is, by and large, pretty good. However, the CRTC has bequeathed Bell and Rogers with a virtual manoply to provide it’s services to all Ontarians. They seem to be content to take the easy way to make money; simply service the easy money, the more densely population areas and leave the rest of us out in the cold. This is simply not acceptable!
I had Bell Wimax a few years ago and they discontinued it and it was great. They replaced it with turbo hub which was way more expensive and capped at 50 gig and kept going down. I just don’t understand how Bell gets away with it. I live in Floral Park and Washago has cable just 3 km down the road and home along the Black River has cable 2 km away. Our phone lines can’t handle DSL and no other Fixed wireless is available here its like Bell has some kind of power that stops them. We have about 200 homes in this community and can’t get squat. I thought all rural Ontario was suppose to get access to high speed internet.