They call it high-speed internet, but it didn’t always feel like that in Villeneuve.
After the pandemic started, one Villeneuve area family engaged a wireless company to supply internet and phone to their acreage home.
Michelle Joljart and her husband, Paul Anderson, needed fast internet for large documents. An antenna on the roof pointed to a tower in Sturgeon County, no issues.
Then the company sold to a new provider, who closed some of the towers—and the troubles began. Consistent connection issues, lagging times, needing to reset the system.
“We ended up having super slow internet if there was a storm, if there was a news article about a storm, if there was a fan running,” Joljart said, only partly in jest.
The Villeneuve pair’s quest to stay safely connected echoed the frustrations of internet users in many places around rural Alberta. So close to the Henday, but in rural Sturgeon County; so close to a major Canadian centre, and yet so far from the internet highway.
In December 2020 Sturgeon County partnered with Canadian Fiber Optics for the development and operation of a fiber-based internet service, earmarking $7.3 million for a pilot project in the south-west corner of the county and the Hamlets of Villeneuve, Calahoo, and Riviere Que Barre, as well as the Villeneuve Airport, and the Heritage and ProNorth Industrial Parks.
The shared risk/reward model meant both the County and CFO would contribute financially to the development and operation of the service—and share the revenue. The County ‘s FTTP (Fiber-To-The-Premises) approach gave residents and businesses the fastest, most reliable technology available, with speeds starting at twice the Canadian standard and capable of 10Gbps, faster or equal to any service in Canada.
Phase 1 of the broadband initiative installed fibre to residences and businesses along the fibre route in the southwest corner of the County. The project will install and activate fibre throughout the rest of the County between now and 2024, with a continual series of pre-construction, construction, and service activation steps as fibre deployment rolls out area by area.
The fulfilled promise of connectivity with the County/CFO project was the answer to all the issues for Joljart and Anderson.
The project took a bit longer than the original timeline, plagued by the same issues dogging every business and household: supply chain issues for fiber and lacking workers, but by January 2023, the hookup was done. They opted in, agreeing to pay the monthly fee. Although home phone and TV service aren’t available with the service—yet—the resulting internet connectivity is radically improved.
“It’s been amazing. It’s super fast, it’s reliable, we never had to reset the modem,” Joljart said.
The urgency in Sturgeon County
Numbers from two 2020 internet connectivity surveys of Sturgeon County residents and businesses spoke volumes.
In 2020, over 80 per cent of the residents said they used the internet to shop or do product research. About three-quarters used the internet for voice and video chat. Over half used the internet for education or studying. Almost half used it for security. A third used it for home-based business and over 60 per cent used it to work from home.
While over 90 per cent of the residents surveyed at the time said their home internet was either very important to them or they couldn’t live without it, over half the participants were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their internet’s reliability, speed and value.
Just 2 per cent of the residents surveyed said they didn’t have home internet.
More than 50 per cent of the residents surveyed then believed that the County should partner so that Sturgeon County’s future internet speed requirements can be met at a reasonable cost, and another third believed the County should possibly lend their support to encourage private sector efforts, and possibly invest in making it happen.
Of the businesses surveyed in 2020, over 95 per cent of businesses said the internet was either very important or crucial (two thirds) to their business, but three-quarters of the businesses responding were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their internet’s reliability, speed and value.
Over 90 per cent of the businesses surveyed at the time believed that the County should partner so that Sturgeon County’s future internet speed requirements can be met at a reasonable cost, and another third believed the County should possibly lend their support to encourage private sector efforts, and possibly invest in making it happen.
Back in 2020, more than 50 per cent of the businesses used the internet for downloading or viewing videos, video and voice communications, access to cloud services, managing or providing an online business or website, large file transfers and security. A third of the responding businesses used the internet for credit card processing.
For more information about the Sturgeon County Broadband Energy Strategy, click here: Sturgeon County Broadband Strategy – Sturgeon County
A National Problem
A report from Auditor General Karen Hogan last month detail wide-ranging inequalities of access to high speed internet and cell services for rural and remote communities and for First Nations communities.
The report documents digital divides between urban and rural, Indigenous on reserves and non-Indigenous, in places where the so-called internet highway is more of a dirt track leading to a digital nowhere.
By 2021, the overall Internet connectivity of households across the country was 91 per cent, with almost 100 per cent of urban dwellers having access, but connectivity in rural and remote communities lagged at 59 percent, and at 43 per cent among First Nations reserves, according to AG figures.
“When services are of poor quality or are unaffordable, people are effectively excluded from participating equally in the digital economy; accessing online education, medical care, and government services; or working remotely. This is especially concerning given that rural and remote communities and First Nations reserves are underserved or not connected at all,” Hogan wrote in the report tabled last month in the House of Commons.
The audit also found the varying degrees of inequality of connectivity quality weren’t fully under the watch of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada; tracking, the survey said, was lacking.
“The strategy had affordability as an objective for connectivity initiatives, but it did not consider income as an element in evaluating whether affordability is being achieved. This was despite the fact that rural and remote communities identified affordability as a barrier to economic development,” Hogan noted.
“These findings emphasize the persistent digital divide for people living on First Nations reserves and in rural and remote communities, compared to people who live in urban areas,” said Hogan.
“The government needs to take action so that there is affordable, high-speed connectivity coverage for Canadians in all areas of the country.”
Ottawa has set a goal of connecting 98 per cent of Canadians to high-speed internet by 2026, with universal access by 2030.
