Representatives of a dozen Alberta municipalities attended a rural Internet workshop at Mountain View County (MVC) office to explore options for improving service to outlying homes and businesses.
Sponsored by MVC, the one-day workshop was attended by Coun. Angela Aalbers. During the recent county council meeting, she updated councillors on the workshop.
“We had some good discussions,” said Aalbers. “I think the issues are very similar across the board, so essentially in rural it is lack of population densities to actually justify ISP (Internet service providers) coming. It's the actual cost of running fibre towers and all of that.
“All of our issues are the same, although we agreed that probably the solutions for every community are going to be slightly different. Overall a really good workshop. Everyone who came I think was very happy and very happy to have the conservation.”
At the direction of council, administration has been researching ways to improve rural Internet services for county residents and businesses. The workshop was part of that process.
There are numerous challenges facing rural municipalities when it comes to improving broadband service, she said.
“You have the issues of municipalities not wanting to compete with private enterprise. You have the issues of trying to get ISPs on board to potentially not a very economically viable area.
“Then you have the misunderstanding or conflict between who is actually responsible for this: is it at a municipal level, is it at a provincial level, or is it a federal level? It becomes a bigger beast when you start talking about it.”
MVC councillor Al Kemmere, who is also the president of the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties (AAMDC) said, “We can't keep chasing the Internet issue with money because we will never catch up.
“It's got to be chased with legislation and that legislation has to be more or less if you are going to be providing Internet service in this concentrated populated area, you will have to provide a percentage of whatever that is in the more remote areas. Our problem still is accessing the more remote people, the more remote areas.
“We are pretty lucky here through MVC other than the far east and the far west. That's where we run into the really significant challenges.”
In a briefing note to workshop participants, administration said, in part, that, “the largest and most prevalent issues (facing some county residents/businesses in terms of Internet service) are lack of speed, reliability and high costs. There are a number of providers that service the county, but not limited to fixed wireless providers Xplorenet, CCI Wireless and Airenet, and cellular providers Telus, Rogers, etc.
“The ideal future of broadband within MVC would be to identify a solution that would meet the needs of residents and businesses throughout MVC with minimal financial impact to the county.”
