Concerns about poor Internet service and broadband capacity in rural Alberta were on the table when a provincial minister made a stop in the Foothills.
“In 2019 our entire world is built around technology, it’s built around streaming, it’s built around data,” Minister of Service Alberta Nate Glubish said during discussions at ITS Global at the Warner Business Park near Aldersyde on Aug. 21. “The business case for rural Alberta is always behind the business case for urban.
“The challenge we have before us, is how do we stop rural Alberta from falling behind?"
Glubish was joined by Highwood MLA RJ Sigurdson and Jordan Young, CEO of CCI Wireless and Drew Mason of ITS Global, which provides software for feedlots.
Although Okotoks is just a stone’s throw from Calgary, concerns of poor Internet service in the area was something Sigurdson heard about on the campaign trail.
He said he had friends near the Big Rock who, up until a year ago, had trouble accessing Netflix.
“This was part of our platform,” Sigurdson said of improving bandwidth connectivity across the province. “Internet is a struggle across the rural area. We are discussing, ‘how do we deal with that? How do we improve it...
“Right now, it is the world of technology and we have to make sure that we have the services there, to combat some of that rural decline.”
Young said broadband service has become a necessity in the business community.
“It is no longer a 'nice to have.' It’s fundamental to economic development, it’s fundamental to community development — to community sustainability.”
He said communities and business communities without strong broadband connectivity will “wilt, shrivel and die.
“Any rural community with poor connectivity will start to lose their commercial base, then their population base...”
Mason said there are some southern Alberta feedlots which had challenges to get fast Internet.
“(That is) being able to get stable Internet with enough through-put,” Mason said. “When they do lose connectivity it could be a week before someone comes to repair it.”
He added having adequate Internet service was paramount to ITS Global setting up shop at Warner near Aldersyde.
Glubish said targets by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission are that by 2021, 90 per cent of Canadians have access to 50 megabytes per second for download and 10 megabyte upload speeds.
“Right now in Alberta we are a little bit 80 per cent coverage to have access for all those speeds,” Glubish said. “We have to figure out how do we get to 90 from 80 in the next two years.”
