Gov. rural broadband funding lacks strategy, cohesion: Execulink CEO

The recently launched package of funding opportunities for rural broadband is a good start for rural connectivity, but the federal government so far lacks a cohesive strategy to properly execute the goal of connecting the most rural Canadians, according to Ontario-based Execulink Telecom CEO Ian Stevens. "There's a lot of funding buckets out there provincially, federal as well as municipally. There's funding envelopes out there. They are all disparate programs, they aren't a cohesive strategy. I'm of the view that if you don't have a strategy, you really just have a hobby," Stevens said. Stevens made the comments at a Friday morning session of the 2020 online edition of the Canada's Rural and Remote Broadband Conference, and in response to a question on the adequacy of Canada's rural broadband strategy. Earlier this month, the federal government launched its long-delayed Universal Broadband Fund, with an increase of $750 million for a total of $1.75 billion, with a stated goal of having 98 per cent of Canadians connected to high-speed broadband with speeds of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps download by 2026. The government said it aims to have 100 per cent of Canadians connected by 2030. The UBF follows on from the oft-criticized Connect-to-Innovate program, which the auditor general said suffered from a lack of transparency and a failure to weigh criteria used to select projects. For Stevens, the government strategy thus far is not yet clear enough, despite an increased awareness of the so-called digital divide. "I think the federal government is even more hyper aware of the gap, and I'm not sure they've figured out their strategy yet. Like, on-the-ground strategy," Stevens said. " 100,000 foot level, they've got something in mind, but they haven't figured out how to deliver it on the ground yet." Stevens told the conference that there are certain communities for whom high speed connectivity will never provide enough of a business case for private telecom companies to connect them, and called for a different funding model. "Parts of Canada have business cases that are slightly tougher to make happen than what private enterprise will invest in. Other parts of Canada have business cases that will work with some one time funding. And other parts of Canada have business cases that will never work: it doesn't matter how many dollars you invest," Stevens said. He went on to argue that incumbent telecoms are effectively monopolizing infrastructure-building companies with urban projects, and that the competition around fibre in urban areas has had the effect of slowing down rural connectivity projects. "There's a race to fibre every Canadian city of any size, going on coast to coast. And the incumbents are doing that -- whether cable or telco -- because they know they need to to keep their hands on the customer base they have," Stevens said, saying that it creates a timing and resources challenge, in addition to existing financial challenges for rural connectivity. "It's monopolizing the infrastructure builders that are out there, who know how to build fibre networks, who know how to build fixed wireless networks." Rural connectivity has also been hampered, the CEO told the conference, by CRTC hesitancy on defining high-speed internet as an essential service. The CRTC, Stevens argued, has "the jurisdiction over telecom, and they have chosen to step away from enforcing the jurisdiction. They have every tool in the toolkit they need to build out an essential service, to fund an essential service both front and load." "We could, as a society, leverage the CRTC to do all of this. They have not stepped in with both feet on making sure every Canadian didn't have the basic service objective, they didn't set it up as a basic service requirement." — With reporting by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija

Gov. rural broadband funding lacks strategy, cohesion: Execulink CEO

News | November 30, 2020

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Gov. rural broadband funding lacks strategy, cohesion: Execulink CEO

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