OLDS — O-NET is on a path to paying off its $18-million debt in 25 years, Olds chief administrative officer Brent Williams says.
O-NET and Olds Fibre Ltd. (OFL) which operated it, were created roughly 11 years ago due to concerns among local residents and businesses about access to high-speed internet and other issues.
In 2021, OFL became a municipally controlled corporation as part of the Town of Olds' effort to deal with an estimated $18 million worth of debt (a consolidated loan of $14 million and a $4 million line of credit).
Town officials say that debt was accumulated primarily to help finance the installation of fibre optic cable throughout the community.
Willliams said the town holds or guarantees that debt. An agreed-upon plan calls for it to be paid off within 25 years.
“It’s due to be paid off in 2043,” he wrote in an email to the Albertan.
Williams said O-NET is whittling that debt down annually.
He believes an approximately $400,000 project to upgrade O-NET TV service, which will be rolled out by late spring or summer, will help that cause.
That’s because it's expected to not only likely attract and keep current customers, but obtain more as the company’s services are marketed to other communities.
Noting that O-NET is a town-owned entity, Williams said the sooner and further that debt is cut down, the better for the municipality because it has other pressing issues that require money.
"From a small town cash management and infrastructure management perspective, it is difficult for the town because we have a lot of other priorities to fund,” he said.
Williams cited water leakage, aging sewer and water pipes and water infiltrating the sewer system as just three very expensive examples.
“What’s under the streets, that is the most important piece of any town; what keeps the water and sewer running, the stormwater draining.
“And all that’s aging. Just like every other town in Alberta, we have to make sure we have debt capacity for those unintended situations,” he said.
Competitive advantage
O-NET chief operating officer Matthew Anderson said O-NET has a big advantage over other smaller independent companies because it offers what is called “triple play” service: TV, internet and home phone service.
Generally, the only other companies out there providing triple play service are what Anderson refers to as “the incumbents,” the big phone, internet, TV service providers like Telus, Bell or Rogers.
“Most of the independents – at least in the prairie provinces – are all single-play, so internet only,” Anderson said.
That’s because providing internet only is pretty simple: many obtain internet service from wholesalers, then re-sell that service to customers.
But TV service is far more complicated.
“The television comes along with broadcasters’ rights, new CRTC regulations, new bandwidth requirements. Every channel has its own rights and responsibilities of how you can handle their content,” Anderson said.
“So TV also comes along with a lot more sophisticated equipment in your central office than simply internet reseller, relaying an internet signal back to that dwelling.”
O-NET is installing a whole new TV service platform with an eye to not only improving service to customers in Olds but also providing an attractive package for other communities in order to strengthen the company’s bottom line.
When it’s fully up and running in late spring or summer, customers will get sophisticated TV service provided by set-top boxes that they can watch via conventional remotes. Or they can download the O-NET app onto their smart TV or other devices and watch it that way.
Anderson says that platform and the triple play service O-NET can offer is very appealing to municipally-owned networks in other communities.
"O-NET is garnering a lot of interest from other municipal networks,” he said.
“Other municipal networks have invested in their own fibre networks and they want O-NET to provide its home phone, internet and TV services on top of its network.
“O-NET is the only one that can offer the triple play that is not incumbent. And for the most part, these municipal networks do not let incumbents on their networks.
“And O-NET, to my knowledge, is one of the only ones, if not the only one, on the identified municipal networks that can offer triple play service.”
He listed Lethbridge, Sturgeon County, Red Deer County and Clearwater County as “an immediate focus for O-NET's expansion.”
In fact O-NET services are already being delivered to commercial customers in Lethbridge and to customers in Entwistle in Parkland County, west of Edmonton.
“The next kind of stage in O-NET's expansion is going to be to move into providing triple play services on all these other municipal networks,” he said.
Another plan, announced earlier by the Town of Olds' chief administrative officer, is to provide service to First Nations in Saskatchewan via another partner, Nation Fiber Corp.
Anderson said as expansion occurs, the company, which currently has about 22 employees, will likely have to hire three or four more over the next year or so.
He said earlier, the company hired a business development manager. His job is to "manage the methodic and strategic expansion of O-NET into these new markets.”
