Depending on the benevolence of private interests to deploy infrastructure that serves the common good has left Sundre firmly embedded in the digital dark age.
Last March, council decided to — despite a strong business case that clearly indicated an unmistakable opportunity to within a decade turn a profit — kill the effort to pursue publicly owned broadband Internet infrastructure dead in the water.
The idea was to build a town-owned network that providers — from behemoths like Telus to local upstarts such as O-NET — would in turn have paid the municipality essentially what amounts to a rent in order to connect residents and businesses to modern, high-speed Internet, including packages that offered television as well as phone services.
Although the multi-million-dollar project would have initially required investing funds from public coffers as well as some debenture borrowing, new streams of revenue would eventually have been generated, reducing the burden on taxpayers in the long run.
Administrative staff’s projections were even based on extremely conservative uptake numbers of barely one-third of residents and businesses signing on to the service. Yet an independent, third party survey that garnered far more responses than the typical questionnaire put out to the community illustrated that the sign-on rate could easily have been closer to two-thirds.
Besides, data and broadband usage only continue to increase significantly — doubling every couple of years for decades with every indication the trend will persist — so the demand was undeniable.
Had council moved forward, plans would already be well underway to begin installing the infrastructure this spring, and by 2020, the community would finally have been connected to the 21st century.
Unfortunately, we instead continue to linger behind, stuck in the late 20th century paying premium dollar to companies like Telus that have little to no interest in upgrading their largely obsolete infrastructure.
Adding insult to injury, the average going rates that people in the area pay would provide lightning fast upload and download speeds in the city. Even some developing countries have higher speeds at more competitive prices available.
Council’s decision to pull the plug on the project — including a middle ground option to pursue the initiative through a public-private partnership — stemmed largely from the impression that a company had expressed interest in stepping up to the plate.
But more than half a year later, there have been no meaningful updates.
In the total absence of anything resembling a plan, there seems to be no light at the end of this dark tunnel.
— Ducatel is the Round Up’s editor
