OTTAWA – While most people are on vacation, federal politicians are on the campaign trail, as anyone following telecommunications news can surely see.
While the federal government also announced Wednesday a multi-million-dollar committment to Telesat’s low-earth orbit research and development efforts, which would impact positively rural wireless subscribers, Tuesday, ISED Minister Navdeep Bains also announced two less sexy measures signalling improvement for rural and remote wireless providers.
Smaller service areas
The first is the creation of a new Tier 5 service area for spectrum allocation. This will allow providers to acquire spectrum for far smaller areas. In the past, a local independent provider, for example, in order to buy spectrum might have had to bid for areas that were far larger than their service area – with corresponding prices which made it uneconomical to do so.
The consultation on this process started in November 2018 with final comments due on March 21, 2019. With a decision issued on July 23, one can argue some ISED staffers surely earned their vacations.
In the past there were four tiers which represented licence sizes that divided the country into 172 service areas. “A better recognition of Canada’s geographic differences, with clear delineation between urban and rural would increase access to spectrum and facilitate service delivery to rural areas including for broadband Internet service,” reads the decision. “A new set of smaller service areas would provide ISED with more flexibility in developing licensing frameworks to accommodate the different needs and use cases across Canada.”
Under the new regime, 654 service areas can be allotted. This new design will be incorporated in the Spectrum Policy of the Government that will govern future auctions.
New technology used in developing the mapping of these service areas will also help ISED dealing with the apparent increase complexity.
Revised licence fee framework for fixed point-to-point systems
More on the side of nuts and bolts, this decision is about reducing the rates for companies doing transport/backhaul using wireless which is often the case in rural areas. In urban areas, companies transport data between towers via fibre, but in rural areas that’s too costly.
“Although not a component of the proposed fee model, stakeholders overwhelmingly expressed a need for reduced fees in rural and/or remote parts of Canada to support expansion of telecommunications networks,” the decision reads.
As a result, ISED will establish reduced base rates for fixed point-to-point links operating in rural and remote areas. ISED will further reduce base rates across all bands by 20% in rural areas and by 50% in remote areas. ISED will be using Tier 5 service areas to determine the rate.
“The decisions announced today will make it easier for small and regional service providers to acquire spectrum and deliver telecommunications services in rural areas. This is one more example of how our government is working to improve rural connectivity and making sure that Canadians in all areas of the country have access to the latest technologies, including 5G,’ said Bernadette Jordan, Minister of Rural Economic Development, in the press release.
Despite what the Auditor General said about the lack of a strategy on providing connectivity in rural and remote areas, one cannot miss how components of just such a strategy are falling into place since he voiced his opinion.
