BROADBAND IN CANADA’S FAR NORTH got a boost earlier this fall when the federal government gave Northwestel $50 million for the deployment of a satellite backhaul network for Nunavut. The much needed investment comes from the Liberals’ Budget 2016 Connect to Innovate program, which promises $500 million over five years to address lack of high speed Internet services in rural and remote regions of the country.
Curtis Shaw, COO at Northwestel, noted at the time of the funding announcement that this new backhaul network will provide additional choices to consumers and businesses. The company will also invest $73 million of its own funds on the backhaul network.
“Northwestel will be harnessing its new open-access satellite backhaul network – made possible by the Government of Canada’s Connect to Innovate program – to improve available Internet speeds and capacity across Nunavut,” he said.
There can be little doubt that additional funds to support broadband deployment in the Far North is needed. While approximately half of the northern population (largely those living in Whitehorse and Yellowknife) receives service that resembles the high speeds available to southern Canadians, the other half spread out in a number of smaller, and sometimes fly-in only, communities gets an inadequate level of service with much lower speeds. For some folks and businesses, it’s often easier and faster to put large files on a USB key and fly them out.
The first big question to raise is, is this $50 million enough? And is the entire $500 million a big enough pot of money to solve the problem? Not to mention, what can we feasibly spend to service a community of just 112,000 Canadians spread over 3.8 million square kilometres, where almost half live in three well serviced towns (Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Iqaluit). That’s 0.03 people per square kilometre across the three territories. As a comparison. Ontario has 13.6 million people spread over a million square kilometres. That’s a population density 45,000% lower than Canada’s most populous province.
To narrow it down further so one can really get a handle on the scale of the costs of service differential, the population of southern Ontario (Barrie on down) is 12.7 million living in just under 140,000 square kms. That’s a population density of 91 people per.
According to Jeff Philipp, president and CEO at SSi Micro Ltd., the answer is no, it’s not enough money. In an interview with Cartt.ca in September, he noted that the company filed three separate applications for funding under the Connect to Innovate program. Even its least expensive application was more than three times what the government awarded to Northwestel.
Philipp wondered how the federal government expects this $50 million in funding to Northwestel to enable a service that offers five times as much capacity for download and three times as much for upload than is available today.
“We didn’t give them a $50 million proposal because they was no solution at $50 million. Just kick the ball down the road and lie to the consumer. 15 Mbps down, not possible. Technically not possible,” he argued.
To further reiterate his point that governments have been less interested in solving the problem and more concerned with scoring political points and looking good to voters, Philipp recounted the story of receiving federal funding a number of years ago to bring broadband to Nunavut.
The government at the time insisted that the minimum speed requirement be 5 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up. But based on the $35 million commitment, plus matching funds from the company, it was simply impossible. So instead, SSi Micro chipped in $40 million to the government’s $35 million and was able to deploy a 3/1 Mbps service.
"Just because something has been around for 100 years doesn’t make it the right approach." – Samer Bishay, Iristel
Others believe broadband in the North can be solved for a price of around $60 million. Samer Bishay, president and CEO at Iristel (pictured), acknowledged that it can’t a fibre based option but one using satellites. His affiliate firm Kepler Communications has a small, or nanosatellite, option that he said could address the northern broadband issue for that price tag.
“We submitted a proposal that would fix the entire North’s problem, the entire north, not just Nunavut, not just the Northwest Territories, not just Yukon, for roughly $60 million,” said Bishay. The problem, he added, was that the government was unwilling to fund what it described as a risky venture.
“We didn’t get that fund because it was seen as a high risk, because we didn’t have a satellite launch yet. Mind you we’re launching our first satellite in December, everything is on track,” he said, adding that the funds could have 
been awarded contingent on launching a bird.
Bishay suggested the government needs to think beyond business-as-usual models.
“The way we’re solving the problem using status quo approaches and traditional suppliers is not going to fix our problem. We have to be risk takers, we have to look at things a little differently. Just because something has been around for 100 years doesn’t make it the right approach. And it’s unfortunate that that much money was given to just fix Nunavut and it’s still a short term solution,” he argued.
Despite questions about the level of Connect to Innovate funding, there is more money to come for broadband in the future. The CRTC announced in its Basic Service Obligation (BSO) decision last year that it would create a new fund to support broadband deployment. A process is now underway to determine how upwards of $750 million over five years would be distributed and what aspects of broadband it should focus on.
While questions still remain about how the CRTC is going to allocate its funding and whether the Connect to Innovate funding levels are sufficient, the latter is at least attempting to solve the biggest impediment to improved broadband services in the North. That problem is a lack of backbone or transport infrastructure redundancy.
