IT’S NO SECRET that the lack of readily available high-speed internet has long been a headache for people who live in rural Manitoba. “Lack of access to reliable high-speed internet is hurting economic growth in rural and remote areas,” the agricultural weekly The Western Producer reported in 2017 in an exposé called Out of Touch.
“Frustrated farmers, rural businesses and homeowners have said they have inadequate and expensive internet service…and for some producers without reliable data, the age of autonomous machines is stalled.” A 2016 study by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority found average download speeds in rural Manitoba to be 4.6 megabytes per second, only one-third of the average download speed in cities. In short, the digital age is threatening to leave these communities behind.
Dave Baxter, CEO of Brandon, Man.-based Westman Communications, is hoping to change the situation in more than 30 communities in rural southern Manitoba, through a massive multiyear fibre build supported by the 22,000 members of the established co-op.
In 2017, the co-operative invested $5 million to connect 11 communities as part of the ongoing project. “We have connected 15 communities with fibre over the last 18 months, so we have 27 that are connected now, and we have plans over the next 12 months to connect six more [which will amount to] 33 communities and 99% of the homes that we serve,” Baxter explains.
The 37 communities in Westman’s network range from urban Brandon (population 49,000, the second-largest city in Manitoba) to tiny St. Lazare (population 254). “Our communities vary in size and they’re quite spread out, so connecting them with fibre is much easier [than other methods],” says Baxter.
“The average size is about 910 homes. On a standalone basis, a lot of the communities aren’t large enough to justify the investment it would take for us to provide Internet. We’ve never had difficulty justifying investments to provide broadband to Brandon, but as you try to provide services to smaller and smaller communities, it gets more difficult to justify the investment,” he explains. “You can’t build head-end infrastructure in that many communities… we decided it would be best to put in fibre infrastructure to connect them back to Brandon.”
The demand for improved Internet has come from the communities themselves in some cases, including in Forrest, north of Brandon. “In Forrest, we had some community champions who approached us asking for high speed internet,” Baxter recalls. “They had something like 7 Mbps (download), and we said that if they could get people to sign up in advance, we would do (a fibre build).” Three quarters of homes in the community of 1,337 people agreed to sign up, and about 80% of homes in the community are now connected via Westman’s network and enjoying far higher speeds. Baxter says the company is considering expanding the program to other as-yet underserved towns and villages where community demand is present.
Once connected, Baxter says the communities “have all the Internet services that larger communities have.”
“They might now have download speeds of 5 to 7 Mbps, and once they’re connected, the speeds are going to be as high as 150.”
"Residents really wanted better internet service… we’ve also been partnering with school divisions or electrical utilities who have interest in fibre infrastructure." – Dave Baxter, Westman Communications
By extension, it’s also an improvement for the company’s bottom line. “The more opportunities we can generate for communities to access these services, the more we can capitalize on it,” says Baxter.
He adds “a combination of factors” moved Westman to invest in fibre. “There’s growing demand for high speed internet in the context of slow upload speeds and bandwidth limits. Residents really wanted better internet service… we’ve also been partnering with school divisions or electrical utilities who have interest in fibre infrastructure.
“Shaw (it’s wholesale TV signal provider) has also been converting to a different encryption (so) we had the choice between investing $75,000 per head end or eliminating that by connecting communities to Brandon [via fibre]. The investment is only made once and we can [also] offer digital HD and TiVo and… retail and wholesale data transport to business customers,” Baxter explained.
Another positive side effect of the fibre build has been to make community cable programming easier to co-ordinate. “Now that communities can share content [through video feeds], that takes a lot of pressure off the programming volunteers,” he says. “Over time, there has been less and less local programming offered by broadcasters, and we have become increasingly important players in providing the kind of community programming – local sports, church services, ice-skating recitals– that people ordinarily wouldn’t see.” In May, Westman won a Tuned-In Award from the Canadian Communications Systems Alliance for its efforts.
An essential service
In 2016, the CRTC declared broadband internet an essential service, on the same level as landline phone service, and established a provider-driven accessibility fund set to grow to more than $750 million over five years. The federal government also announced (with Connect to Innovate) that it would invest $500 million in making broadband accessible to 300 rural and remote communities across the country by 2021. At the time, the CRTC estimated that about two million households did not yet have high-speed access, and set a goal to reduce that number “to zero” in the next 10-15 years.
“The federal government is on the right track,” says Baxter. “They have had a few good programs that have resulted in greater availability of broadband, but it’s going to take more funding, especially as you go into remote and harder-to-reach areas. A wireless provider needs a fibre backbone to go into these areas…but working in smaller, remote communities won’t be economical without subsidies. It will take billions to connect all of Canada, if that’s their goal.”
“The Internet has become a critical service, just like heat, water and electricity,” says Baxter. “It’s more of a necessity than it has ever been. When we provide high-speed internet to a community for the first time, residents and businesspeople feel like they’re on a new, level footing with other communities.”
