Mike Howes types ‘internet speed test’ into the Google search bar on the computer in his office at Sparklean DKI on Riel Drive, and then he waits. He has become good at waiting. The results come back at 13.2 Mbps for the download speed and 6.53 Mbps for the upload speed, all courtesy of the antenna that he had installed within the last few years. The antenna relays the Internet signal from Spruce Grove.
It’s the fastest access he’s ever had, a service for which he pays $300 a month. It’s far from ideal, but it could be – and has been – worse.
“Nobody's on our computers right now, so it looks like it's a lot faster than it normally is, but they were bottoming out at six and 13 (Mbps),” he remarked. As more people file back into the busy emergency flood and fire restoration business to sit at their computers and upload sometimes 100 images per job, the speed test figures drop and drop and drop.
“If we had eight or 10 of us on right now, we'd be at one and two probably.”
It’s still double to triple the speed of what he was able to get through his previous Internet service through Telus.
For comparison, a midday test at the Gazette’s office where perhaps two to three dozen people were working on their computers simultaneously resulted in an internet speed test of 74.5 and 70.4 Mbps for download and upload speeds, respectively.
Sparklean project manager Christina Deans confirms the sad state of affairs.
“It's just incredibly slow. It'll spin and spin and spin, and a lot of times it’ll time out, so you have to start again. You’ll lose a lot of work if it times out.”
Over the last few years, Howes has been vocal with his displeasure about the speed of Internet in Riel Park. One of the two major industrial areas of the city, Riel is nearly 500 acres of land that boasts dozens upon dozens of serviced industrial and commercial land for the Enjoy Centre and manufacturers as large as ProWestern Plastics to small, specialty retailers like Bailey Books to auto repair services, social clubs and more.
For all of his well-founded complaints, Howes has also voiced his hopes about the prospect of Telus’s PureFibre installation, a $100-million effort to connect more than 90 per cent of homes and businesses in the city and neighbouring Sturgeon County directly to its fibre optic network, according to a news release on Telus’s website. PureFibre would result in 1,500 Mbps download and 940 Mbps upload speeds. The release states the company anticipates connecting the majority of homes and businesses by the end of 2020, though it doesn’t specify which areas would comprise the 10 per cent of the city that would be out of luck.
No information was available from Telus by press time.
More than a year ago, they asked him if he’d be interested in the service. He responded in the positive at the time but, with all the fibre optic cable work going on throughout the city, he hasn’t heard back from them if or when it would be available in Riel.
Howes had to sign a three-year contract for his antenna-based service, and it expires this month.
“They asked us in a questionnaire, ‘If we had fibre optic would you pay for it?’ I said, ‘Of course. In a heartbeat.’ And Shaw came around and asked us the same question. We thought, ‘Well, whichever one of you gets it in first, we’re all over it,’” he continued. “If it's there, and I can sign up, boy ... let's do it.”
