With Google’s announcement that they will be providing broadband access to unserved areas with Google Fiber For Communities, it left me thinking about how Canada’s needs are being addressed. The process started in 2001 with the allocation of $35 million in the Liberal government’s budget for rural broadband development. Successive governments have been promising and funding broadband initiatives and yet here we sit in 2010 with almost 20% of Canada’s rural areas not having access to broadband.
The current Conservative government in Canada is now pointing at 2016 as a target date for rolling out broadband Canada-wide. This is not to point a finger at the Canadian government or Canadian telecoms. Clearly Google is stepping in because the U.S. government and American telecoms have not got the job done either. Large telecoms have no financial interest in moving into rural areas where the concentration of users is low and the investment per user large.
So who is going to bring broadband to rural Canada? Well there are two very interesting case studies out there at the moment. The first is a private/public partnership that seems to be to having some success in Nova Scotia, where the BroadBand for Rural Nova Scotia initiative has a stated goal of providing 100% broadband access to all of Nova Scotia. While this private/public partnership has worked, there is another solution which relies on the individual entrepreneur to find the answers. The startup culture has always been rich in the internet space and it seems no surprise that this innovative culture would find a way to bring broadband to areas government and large business has not.
Silo Wireless from Burford Ontario is providing high speed internet access to rural Brant County. Despite being less than two hours from Toronto and not in a remote part of the country, many of those who live in rural areas in Southern Ontario have limited access to high speed internet and the large carriers are not offering to supply a solution. Silo Wireless stepped in with a low-cost answer. Silo Wireless does exactly what their name suggests. They mount transmission devices on the farm silos that dot the countryside and provide a wireless transmission network. Customers install a small receiver on their rooftop and are given access to high speed internet access. While this may not match the speeds that fibre can provide, the fact is a small two person startup has been able to provide high speed internet to families, schools and businesses that had been unable to get a solution from large providers and government programs.