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This article was published 26/2/2018 (938 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Exasperated by spotty internet service that threatens to stifle development, partners in the capital region are looking to own their internet service and run it like a public utility.

The municipalities will launch a feasibility study into the cost of installing fibre optic cables that would increase internet speeds exponentially.

Current internet service in some parts of the capital region — municipalities around Winnipeg — is comparable to dial-up. Some areas are said to receive as little as two megabits. (Megabits measure speed whereas megabytes measure memory, which wouldn’t increase with fibre optics.) The RM of Rosser has especially poor service.

In Winnipeg, an average internet package might be $90 per month before tax for up to 50 megabits of download speed. If the capital region opted for its own internet utility using fibre optics, it would offer up to 1,000 megabits of download speed for those customers in urban settings, who would be physically hooked up to fibre optic cables.

For more rural customers, towers would be used to provide wireless service with markedly fewer megabits, but still have speeds comparable to those available in Winnipeg.

However, a Winnipeg household with 50 megabits of download speed only has about 10 per cent of that speed for uploading. With fibre optics, download and upload speeds are the same.

Fibre optics are glass strands about the diameter of a human hair that carry data at nearly the speed of light. They are protected inside cables and buried in trenches about two metres deep.

"For business and industry, it makes you competitive," said Colleen Sklar, executive director of the Partnership of the Manitoba Capital Region, the umbrella association for 17 municipalities.

"We have to think how can we can make ourselves competitive and desirable for people to come here."

Sklar said the municipalities electing to participate in the venture are still trickling in. Municipalities known to be on board so far, as compiled by the Free Press, include East and West St. Paul, Rosser, Headingley, Macdonald, St. Andrews, Ritchot and Tache. Both the Town and RM of Morris are keen to be partners.

Even though Winnipeg internet service is still run through copper telephone lines installed in the 1940s, the market is not underserved like the rest of the capital region. So there is little impetus in Winnipeg to be involved in the utility.

The capital region is modelling itself after an innovative co-op established last year in Hamiota and neighbouring communities in western Manitoba. The Park West Fibre Optics Co-op Inc. was formed at a cost of $4.6 million by three rural municipalities — Hamiota, Yellowhead and Prairie View — piggybacking on fibre optic cables installed for schools in the Park West School Division.

"The consultant (Don Reece of EKB Consulting in Winnipeg) tells us we’re the only municipality-owned fibre (in Western Canada) where fibre goes straight to every home," said Tom Mollard, chief administrator for the RM of Hamiota, northwest of Brandon.

Hamiota has the largest expense at about $2.5 to $2.7 million. But now its residents have 600 to 900 megabits of speed, versus the five to seven before, and 60 to 90 megabits for people in rural areas served by telecommunication towers, versus just three megabits previously.

"Two years ago, it seemed like a pipe dream. Today, it seems council has achieved everything it wanted to do," Mollard said.

The internet service goes for $60 per month, and $75 for businesses, with no charge for the hookup. Hamiota expects to pay off its $2.5-million cost in 20 years through those fees.

"A business operates for profit. Hamiota only has to break even and the community owns it, similar to a sewer and water system," Mollard said.

Consultant Reece, who is working with the capital region group, called it "extraordinary" the level of service the sparsely populated WestMan region is now getting. "I would argue they need it more than urban centres. They need better connectivity" because of the distance from retail outlets and services.

"Even if not it’s not lucrative and just breaks even, but you get 10 times and 50 times as fast service, and the money goes back into the municipality, it’s probably a good thing," Reece said.

The first to look into the Hamiota model were the RMs of Macdonald and Morris, and the Town of Morris, south of Winnipeg.

"We have had requests from residents to explore options for improved internet service," Macdonald Reeve Brad Erb said. "I thought, through discussions with various municipal leaders, that this is something that may well benefit the capital region and beyond."

However, capital region partners are not just looking to own internet services as a co-op, or merely as a utility, but are considering running it as an arm’s-length development corporation. That way, profits could be reinvested for group-buying and possibly go into business, like gravel, to benefit the municipalities. The corporation would be run by a board of directors.

That has generated grumbling from some capital-region council members who view that as going too far into the private sector. Some council members have said they don’t want a municipal body interfering with and bidding against the private sector.

Sklar said it’s too early to get hung up on those kinds of issues. "We’re contemplating that, as well, but we’re still far away from having any details. We have no idea what this looks like."

West St. Paul Mayor Bruce Henley said internet service is a major concern for residents, even in his small constituency right next to Winnipeg.

"There are big concerns about the limits of our internet," Henley said. "We’ve got growing communities and internet is dial-up speed in a lot of cases. It’s becoming such a necessity and what we’re asking is, what else is out there?"

A viable, municipality-run internet service using fibre optics "would be better than anything you can get in the city," he maintained.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca