Wheatland eyeing provision of broadband services

By Sean Feagan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Wheatland County is starting to look at the feasibility and benefit of providing broadband internet, which could have a large impact on its businesses.

Broadband internet is lacking throughout many rural areas of Canada, and Wheatland County is no exception. But on Oct. 6, county council passed a motion to hire Tricon Solutions Inc. as a project manager to help assess the feasibility of bringing it to the county.

The gold standard for broadband internet is a speed of 50 megabits per second (Mbps) for downloading and 10 Mbps for uploading, or 50/10 Mbps. These speeds are needed to reliably use cloud-based software applications, government services such as telehealth and business support, online learning resources and high-definition streaming videos, according to the federal department of finance.

But there is a “connectivity gap” or “digital divide” in Canada, as rural areas offer slower, less reliable and more expensive internet access than in urban centres. In 2017, just 37 per cent of rural households and 24 per cent of Indigenous communities had access to 50/10 Mps, compared to 97 per cent of urban homes, according to the federal government.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted this disparity, as it has required more people to access and rely on digital services while working and studying from home.

To bridge this gap, many rural municipalities are now looking at ways of providing broadband services, said Matthew Boscariol, Wheatland County’s general manager of community and development services. “This is not an exclusive thing to Wheatland – it’s very much a national issue across rural, northern and remote communities,” he said.

In 2019, an additional $1.7 billion was committed to developing broadband internet by the federal government, which has committed to bringing it to 90 per cent of Canadians by 2021, to 95 per cent by 2026, and to all Canadians by 2030.

One of the main reasons for municipalities developing their broadband is to attract businesses and be more investment friendly, said Boscariol. “You get some bites every now and then from interested organizations that are looking to maybe develop, and the question is always, ‘what are your services like?’ All businesses want the internet delivered to them at a high speed.”

In rural areas, broadband is often available near communities, hospitals and schools, but is really lacking at the “farm gate” – rural properties where most producers, entrepreneurs and workers operate, explained Bow River MP Martin Shields.

“Rural municipalities need faster internet for two reasons: for newer farming technologies, which are phenomenal; and to attract other businesses that need high level broadband to work,” he said.

Access to fast internet is becoming increasingly important for producers not only because of the increasing amount of networked technology they use, but also because they need access to real-time market data, added Shields. “They need to keep up to date on the financial world of the products they are producing.”

Broadband is also important for niche businesses located off the farm, such as bed and breakfasts and agrotourism outfits, said Boscariol. “They need their websites functioning, and if they do transactions on their websites, they need the speed to undertake those transactions to keep the businesses thriving.”

However, bringing broadband to rural areas is challenging because the low population densities there result in a lowered economic incentive for carriers. While many rural municipalities share a common goal of providing or expanding broadband, a one-size-fits-all approach often does not work.

Wheatland County was one of 26 communities’ part of a regional broadband investigation conducted by a private consultant for the Calgary Regional Partnership in 2016. Ultimately, however, the county is deciding to forge ahead alone.

Wheatland’s broadband project is in its infancy and is merely a feasibility study at this time, explained Cory Adamson, Wheatland County’s manager of information technology (IT) services. 

“Right now, we’re just in the investigatory phase – we want to see what the appetite is out there and see what benefits we could gain from it,” he said. “If what comes out of that investigation is a positive for Wheatland County, then that will give us our plan going forward.”