Rural Broadband in Canada Is Still a Mess

The Canadian government just announced the next step in its Digital Canada 150 plan to bring "high-speed internet to an additional 280,000 homes" in mostly rural area.

To those of us not living in the more densely populated southern and urban areas of Canada, this news should come as a relief. Unfortunately, that plan still complicates the issue of rural broadband access.

As the country argues about whether or not Netflix will kill Canadian broadcasting as we know it, most rural Canadians are still on dial-up and satellite connections and just want fast enough internet to reliably stream online video.

As it stands, Canada is already falling behind the world in terms of broadband speeds and access, so it's laudable that the government is trying to do something to increase broadband availability to people in remote areas. It's a big country, after all.

Ontario, for example, contained an estimated 93,947 "underserved" households as defined by Industry Canada and the CRTC. Nunavut, for its part, was entirely underserved with 8661 out of 8661 households lacking access to decent broadband.

Here's how the Digital 150 plan works: Internet service providers (ISPs) will locate target areas of underserved households they wish to provide service to, apply for grants, and (hopefully) provide the service. Despite the government's good intentions, it's difficult to be optimistic.

First off, 5 Mbps (the average internet connection speed in Kazakhstan) is just enough to watch a decent Netflix stream without doing much else on your home internet connection (15 Mbps is the minimum for 4k-resolution content). By no means is it enough for modern, connected life, or for a household that wants to cut the cable cord and still take in some video content.

Secondly, Canadian telecoms have a habit of under-delivering on advertised broadband speeds, cherry-picking data to argue against increased competition, and other questionable moves. The amount of government money involved is no laughing matter, either. The last round of public dollars given to telecom companies to expand rural broadband was $421.9 million in total, with mixed results to show for it.

Noted Canadian digital issues expert and academic Michael Geist put it best in an email to me, "I found the [Digital Canada 150] strategy underwhelming and unambitious. I still do."

One way to improve the performance of rural broadband would be for the government to challenge telecoms to offer a higher minimum level of service than 5 Mbps. After all, rural and northern Canadians deserve access to quality, world-standard internet connections as much as any urban yuppie. That being said, given the remoteness of some these rural locations, infrastructure needs to be considered by all parties.

What to do? Admittedly, the problem of rural broadband isn't easy. But the government's faith that the private sector will do the job with enough subsidies may not be the answer, because it hasn't really worked so far. As one Nobel Prize-winning economist will tell you, giant telecom firms with little competition are seeking-profits, not purely benevolent public services.

The government could try a few things. First, it could offer attractive financing or grants for community-owned broadband, which has been quietly creating success after success in North America, including in Olds, Alberta which has affordable gigabit (1000 Mbps) internet to rural citizens.

Canada could also experiment with a Swedish strategy of rolling out a patchwork of government-owned fiber networks, connecting them, and then competitively leasing access to third-party resellers—delivering faster speeds and lower prices.

Instead of trying something new, the government's strategy for rural and northern internet is poised to stick to a model that's produced middling results. It might be high time to change all that, and finally get Netflix streaming comfortably in the Arctic.

Christopher Malmo is a grassroots development coordinator at OpenMedia.ca. Follow him on Twitter: @chrismalmo