Will the province deliver on rural Internet, or was EORN a better bet?

Jeff Green | Aug 11, 2021

Everyone wants better Internet, and there is an entire industry that is devoted to delivering the Internet, just as there are more and more businesses that cannot operate without reliable Internet service.

In cities, it is a competitive market. There are hundreds of thousands of subscribers, all located within metres of high speed fibre internet pipelines, and companies are scrambling to connect people up with service, at speeds of 100mg per second and 10mg per second for uploads, as a base level of service. 

In rural areas, it is a different story. As the distance there is between houses increases, the profit level to deliver Internet to each of those houses decreases. At a certain point of density, it is no longer viable for private sector corporations to provide service.

Rural residents look to governments to intervene on their behalf. For their part, governments are keen to deliver their services more cheaply and efficiently through electronic means, so they are interested in intervening.

50 years ago that might have led to a public sector investment in an internet backbone and fibre through the countryside, all owned by a Crown corporation. In the modern context it is something different, a public-private partnership of sorts.

The wardens for all of the rural Eastern Ontario counties got together soon after municipal amalgamation to talk about infrastructure deficits, mainly roads and bridges, that they could not maintain themselves. They formed a caucus, the Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus, to lobby the  provincial and federal governments for money to help cover those costs, with some success.

They then turned their attention to the electronic highway, as it was called, and set up an affiliated organisation, the Eastern Ontario Regional Network (EORN),  to improve cell and Internet service throughout the region, and find a way to bring service to the more remote areas in the region whose service was poor to non-existent.

Over the last dozen years, EORN has put together a major Internet project, and a major cell phone project. They have created a funding template, with seed money from federal, provincial and municipal sources, which they use to create a scenario wherein private sector Internet companies can see the potential for profit in providing service to areas where those efforts would not be attractive otherwise.

Over the years EORN has developed expertise in putting these projects together.

A year or so ago, EORN decided to put their largest and most ambitious project together. Looking forward, they decided that in order to provide service that will keep up with the ever expanding desire for instant digital data, they would overstep current standards and seek to build a network that can deliver 1gigabit of information every second to at least 95% of Eastern Ontario residents.

The current standard is 50mg, twenty times slower. Speeds of 100mg per second are common in Canadian cities, and gig service is on the horizon.

Over the past few months, EORN put a big push on for federal and provincial support for the gig project.

But last month the entire enterprise was sidestepped by the Province of Ontario, who have decided to get directly involved in managing these kinds of projects. EORN, which had been preparing to ramp up its capacity for the gig project, is left with a cell gap project that is underway and will be completed in a couple of years, and nothing else to work on.

They will either seek a new role or they will slowly fade away as the cell gap project is completed.

From the point of view of people on the ground, who are hoping and planning for improved Internet and cell service, the potential benefit from direct provincial involvement is the money. While EORN needs to ask the province for money and then ask the federal government to match it, the province has the money they need and a tight relationship with the federal government, at least as far as building out Internet services is concerned.

That does not mean everyone in Denbigh, Plevna, and hard to reach locations throughout the region will be playing video games on our computers, tablets and phones within a few months, however.

For one thing, the province is a macro enterprise, how will they respond to the needs of areas where there are a dozen properties on a remote lake, with difficult terrain and tall trees between them?

And, provincial governments are inherently political. Will Internet projects start being announced, perhaps over the next few months, in ridings where the ruling Conservatives need a boost in order to keep in their column come election day?

And those kinds of election funding announcements don’t always translate into projects. They are not always tied to the capacity to deliver projects quickly.

The Province is promising a lot. They say they will bring 50mg upload, and 10mg download speeds to 100% of Ontario households within 4 years.

If they can do that, EORN will not be missed. But unlike EORN, we do not know if the province has the expertise in place to start making projects happen.

As many of our readers know, Internet and Cell service varies from property to property, depending on geography, topography and the location of the Internet Backbone, to use a phrase that EORN has used for years. The solutions vary as well, from fixed wireless service, boosted cell signals, Starlink Satellite service, etc. and the costs vary depending on the solution and the company providing it.

The gig project, to be honest, seemed pretty ambitious because those speeds were only available through fibre to the home, which may not be viable in semi-remote and remote areas, even with subsides

The provincial promise, on the other hand, can be accomplished through a variety of means.

It remains to be seen, however, if the provincial government is as serious about delivering Internet to 100% of rural Eastern Ontario households as they are about winning 100% of the rural Eastern Ontario seats in next year’s election.