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Broadband strategy estimates $14.3 million for Canmore-wide service

A strategic plan that examined what it would take to install broadband Internet access throughout the entire community has identified the price tag for the municipality at $14.2 million.

A strategic plan that examined what it would take to install broadband Internet access throughout the entire community has identified the price tag for the municipality at $14.2 million.

While council accepted the plan as information, Mayor John Borrowman made it clear that does not mean any spending or approvals have been endorsed by elected officials.

“That means nothing can actually happen in terms of cost and spending until somebody comes back and asks for the next phase,” Borrowman said. “This is for highlevel planning purposes.”

Town of Canmore supervisor of information technology Allan Wingenbach and consultants from IBI Group presented a broadband strategic plan to council at its final meeting in January.

They said broadband is widely seen as an economic driver for communities like Canmore and the report examined the feasibility, scope and different service delivery models that could be used.

“Broadband Internet provides fairly recognizable benefits for education, health care, wellness and hospitality sectors,” said Wingenbach, “but also benefits for existing businesses and economic development in newer areas as demonstrated by the recent Innovate Canmore initiative.

“Our past Canmore business and tourism group identified broadband, along with affordable housing, as areas (that need to be addressed) to attract technology and knowledge-based businesses to Canmore and we are starting to look at this.”

The process to look at broadband began over a year and a half ago through the Calgary Regional Partnership, but Wingenbach said council approved moving forward with a strategic plan to do a deeper analysis of what the service could mean for the community.

Keith Ponton and Dave Dykstra, with IBI, went through the report and recommendations on how Canmore as a municipality could proceed with broadband.

The feasibility analysis by IBI, based on a conceptual network design for residential and commercial locations, estimated the infrastructure cost at $14.2 million. The backbone of the system was estimated at $2.2 million; the infrastructure to connect businesses to it at $1 million and residential services could be in the range of $11 million to implement.

Fiber optic-based broadband networks can deliver speeds of 1,000 megabits (or a gigabite) per second to subscribers and can deliver a variety of services like Internet access, television programming and telecommunication services.

The report analyzed the existing market for broadband services in Canmore, the results of a survey and bandwidth testing performed in August and September last year. It also provided conceptual high level network designs, case studies and various business models.

The Canadian Radio and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC) in 2016 established broadband Internet as a basic service and set target objectives for service levels of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload, with unlimited usage capacity to be available in 90 per cent of Canadian premises by 2021.

Dykstra and Ponton’s report showed Canmore’s current levels for Internet service is below Canadian averages and well below the standards set by the CRTC for 2021. They recommended the Town adopt standards to move it from the current average of 16.0/7.5 Mbps (download/upload) toward an increased speed of 100.20 Mbps and future symmetrical speeds of 1,000/1,000 Mbps.

“As we look at the future in terms of standards, it is not just about download and upload speeds, affordability is an objective and the recent CRTC basic service standard outlines they want providers to eliminate usage caps and usage considerations for landlines,” Ponton said.

The consultants said the municipality has a range of options in terms of direction it could take, from doing nothing and waiting for the private sector to deliver the service, to searching and creating a private public partnership, to building the infrastructure and leasing it out, to building and running a public network.

Each option has benefits and risks, as well as examples of how they have been undertaken in other communities. Olds, Alta., for example, established the O-Net, a municipally-run Internet provider.

“There is an entire spectrum of options for municipalities from doing nothing to building and running a ubiquitous public network and jumping in with both feet into the business,” Ponton said. “Or the town could have fibre optic assets and lease them to telecommunication companies and they would provide the service.”

They recommended the Town construct a fibre optic backbone network to connect municipal facilities and create a pilot project to provide broadband services to businesses and residents within close proximity of that backbone.

The recommendations included offering broadband to businesses and residents on a selective basis with a view to provide full-scale community-wide access in the long term. The approach recommended is an arm’s length utility structure, where the municipality might install the infrastructure, but is not selling the access directly to the consumer.

“Telecom or cable companies do not want to invest more, especially in smaller regions, because there is not a lot of competition,” Ponton said. “Their return on investment is better in larger, more dense centres.”

Not only are grant funds available to support this type of capital project, but a 2026 possible Olympic bid would also create the need to improve the infrastructure available in Canmore.

Ponton said by that time, not only will television be streamed live online, but it is expected to be in high definition.

Wingenbach said with a new economic development officer position approved for the municipality, that staffer would play an important role in moving the project forward in refining costs. It would also be part of the discussion as council enters into planning for its four-year strategic plan.

“We can bring those real concrete numbers forward in working from this high level plan,” he said. “We needed a place to start and this gives us that place.”


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