CONNECTING TO THE FUTURE

Gaps still exist in Ontario’s rural and northern web infrastructure

By Robert Price

IT’S FRUSTRATING.

Rob Goodwill signs into Zoom to lead a meeting. Then his internet connection buffers and kicks him out.

Unstable connections annoy everybody but it’s doubly annoying for Goodwill, Chair of Gay Lea Foods, to be kicked out of his own meetings.

A producer in Owen Sound, he has broadband service, “but it’s terrible,” he says. His farm sits on a corner lot, and the fibre optic line runs right past his property, yet the service provider won’t cross the road to connect his farm.

Goodwell understands well the problems rural Ontarians face with getting serviceable internet. “There are worse than us. Some people really struggle.”

He’s right. The Northern Ontario Broadband Report 2023 , a recent study of Internet connectivity in Ontario’s north, describes vast Internet deserts across Ontario. “[O]f the 285 communities within the federally defined region of northern Ontario,” reads the report prepared by Blue Sky Net, a not-for-profit dedicated to promoting technological adoption in Ontario’s north, “74 have at least 50 per cent of households with access to 50/10Mbps broadband speeds.”

The problem with getting internet to rural areas is directly related to Ontario’s size. All the hills and trees and lakes that make Ontario beautiful make network connectivity difficult. It’s hard to run a cable line through the Canadian Shield.

“Farming is one of the most challenging careers we’re fighting to keep in the north and we should be doing everything we can to meet the needs of the farmer.”

— Susan Church, Executive Director, Blue Sky Net

Beauty And Broadband

Government wants to fix the problem. Together, the federal and provincial governments are spending billions of dollars to connect the north with fibre solutions, with Ontario already having committed $4 billion to deliver high speed connections by 2025. (The federal government hopes to have better internet in Ontario’s north by 2030).

Susan Church, Executive Director of Blue Sky Net, applauds the effort but says a “one-sizefits-all” solution – in this case, high-speed broadband for everybody – will cost more time and money than a “creative approach” that includes more towers, more line-of-sight connections and other quicker fixes that might only cost $400 million.

“This is why we’re trying to impress upon government funding program folks that this really is not just an issue of economics in terms of how much something costs. It’s a global need for Canada to be able to compete,” she says. “Farming is one of the most challenging careers we’re fighting to keep in the north and we should be doing everything we can to meet the needs of the farmer.”

GO LOCAL?

Aaron Ruetz, a producer in Mildmay, Ont., used to have a local internet service provider that worked fairly well. When his wife, Megan, switched to a work-fromhome office job, they discovered the local internet connection couldn’t handle the bandwidth. They switched to Starlink, which is owned by Elon Musk, but at a cost that is “pretty well double” what they used to pay for internet. Megan complains about Starlink’s poor customer service and Aaron regrets having to desert the little guy. “I like supporting local, but when local can’t provide it, I have to deal with a bigger company,” he says.

Until local services improve, rural and northern Ontarians will be left with few options. The prospect could stall development and harm farms.

“Technology right now is found in all areas of our homes and all areas of our business and the farm is no different,” says Church. She says realtors around North Bay report clients regularly ask about internet speeds before they ask about the safety of the drinking water. And despite the fact Ontario’s north already faces a critical shortage of veterinarians and doctors, when the same people discover the north and rural areas don’t have the internet capacity they need, they abandon their plans to live outside major centres.

“I think it would be so much easier for younger generations to want to carry on family farms if they felt they could keep it up from a technology point of view,” says Church. “I do believe that’s another reason you’re seeing generational farms ending.”

By The Numbers

59.5%

Rural and remote communities with highspeed internet access

41%

Percentage of 187 communities with a population under 1,000 with households that can access a standard rate of 50/10Mbps

Source: Northern Ontario Broadband Report 2023, Blue Sky Net

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