High speed internet rolls out soon
County led $120-million project is about to start installing fibre lines
Fibre is coming soon to a rural road near you bringing high-speed internet service that will help residents and businesses thrive, says Northumberland County.
Chances are you’ve heard this many times in recent years, since it was promised to be in place by now and it’s been 17 years since the McGuinty government first offered money for broadband service here, but it seems this time it’s true.
Dan Borowec, who is co-ordinating the $120-million broadband project, says installation of fibre lines will start in a few weeks. The project involves burying or stringing over 2,000 kilometres of fibre across 31 communities in Northumberland with a lot of work being done in Trent Hills.
“It will have a transformational effect,” Borowec said in an interview.
At its meeting today (Tuesday), Trent Hills council will consider a request from NuBuild Contracting Inc. of Concord to make it easier for installation to happen by smoothing the way for the company to get permission to make cuts in roads and pavement.
Instead of seeking a permit and paying a security deposit for each cut, which is the normal process, staff is recommending that the company put up a $10,000 deposit that will cover all its work, which it expects to complete by the end of the year.
In an interview, Borowec said the county/provincial/federal/private project will provide service speeds of one gigabite or more to 11,000 locations that are currently unserved or underserved and have the potential to provide 10 gigs. In recent months, the companies have driven each road and mapped what is needed and what it will cost to get service in place.
If you think that co-ordinating a project with three levels of government and private businesses must be challenge, you’re right. That’s why Borowec, who stepped down as head of the county’s broadband company and retired last month, is still on this job tending to the personal relationships that he nurtured over several years to pull this together.
The federal and provincial governments have contributed $64 million, the county has kicked in $700,000 and the rest is coming from the private sector, Borowec said.
Since the final documents haven’t been signed, he won’t identify the company that will install the fibre lines and provide the internet connection to homes and businesses. He says that will be made public soon with a marketing campaign to alert residents that they will soon be able to sign up for competitively priced, reliable, high-speed internet service.
There will be several installation crews working simultaneously and service will begin as soon as an area is completed and tested, so residents will quickly start to see the changes, Borowec says.
It’s clear that he expects word of mouth from happy users will help the door-to-door crews sign up customers.
The county did a detailed survey of internet service available and found of “the nearly 40,000 households in Northumberland, about one-third of them were either unserved or underserved,” Borowec says.
The three levels of government all view high-speed internet access as a necessary utility such as water, sewers, and roads and have promised to make sure all Canadians have that access.
Of course, most internet services are provided by private businesses, but there are large parts of this country where the cost of running fibre lines makes it unprofitable. The goal of this project was to use public money to build the backbone and let businesses provide the service.
Borowec says it has been a challenge bringing together the two value systems – the private profit motive and the public prosperity goal – but they have succeeded.
He’s excited about “the opportunities afforded those the agricultural community once this is in place. It gives them access to an uninterrupted stream of technology applications that certainly will benefit them.”
Farmers never would have received this service without government help he notes, it’s simply too expensive to build the infrastructure. Broadband will also be good for tourism and manufacturing.
Borowec says he’s heard from companies that have not bid on some jobs in the past because they knew they couldn’t guarantee the high-speed connections their clients would demand.
You can listen to an interview with Borowec discussing this project with Robert Washburn for his Consider This radio broadcast and podcast. I’d suggest you check out Washburn’s stories regularly; his focus is on the southern end of the county, but his stories often touch on our area.
To see the details of where service is being planned, you can check out the Ontario Internet Access Map.
You can read all Trent Hills News stories on my website here.
In theory, the companies are providing service in the residential areas like Campbellford, Warkworth and Hastings. At council this morning, Neil Allanson said Rogers is providing service in Hastings and will be doing some of the rural areas out from there.
Huh... So IF rural residents get the "high speed" version of connectivity they will likely only have that service through one of the few major telecom providers or their off brand subsidiaries. Either way we will likely pay a large sum each month and still have terrible connectivity. Kind of like the bag of rocks we were sold called "5g". 🤷♂️
Good article though Art, thanks. 👍