Innovative internet project will bring B.C.’s rural coastal communities up to speed

It’s a landmark moment for an ambitious project to bring rapid internet to a swath of remote communities along the B.C. coast.

The first 50 kilometres of subsea fibre-optic cable was recently laid at the northern reach of the $45.4-million Connected Coast project that will hook up 139 rural remote communities, including 48 Indigenous communities, to high-speed internet.

The internet initiative aligns with both the federal and provincial governments’ aim to bridge the significant connectivity gap faced by rural Canadians, who often suffer slow, unreliable or non-existent internet in comparison to urban users.

In B.C., nearly 100 per cent of households in large and medium urban areas meet the federal government’s target for internet speeds.

But only 68 per cent of the households on First Nations reserves have high-speed internet and that drops to 63 per cent of households in other rural areas across the province.

The Connected Coast’s fibre-optic spine will snake more than 3,400 kilometres along the coast south from Haida Gwaii and around the bottom of Vancouver Island — becoming one of the longest coastal subsea networks in the world.

The project — spearheaded by the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) on northern Vancouver Island in partnership with the CityWest Cable, a municipally owned telecom company in Prince Rupert, and financed by the provincial and federal governments — is expected to serve 90,000 households when complete.

Landings from the main cable are now established at Dodge Cove and the Indigenous communities of Lax Kw’alaams and Metlakatla near Prince Rupert.

And work on Cortes Island also recently got underway to build the underground infrastructure to connect residents’ homes to the system.

“It's a long time coming and it's fantastic to be underway,” said Cortes Island regional director Noba Anderson.

“It brings capacity for people to work here, play here and to live here in a whole new way.”

The SRD initiated the project after a decade of advocating for better connectivity from private telecom companies and senior levels of government failed to produce results for isolated communities in the region, Anderson said.

There isn’t a business case for private companies to lay fibre-optic cable to serve small coastal communities, and senior levels of government, while willing to provide funding, weren’t looking to become internet providers, Anderson said.

So, SRD formed a corporation and partnered with CityWest to make it happen, she said.

Regional district governments typically don’t tackle large telecommunications projects, said North Island MLA Michele Babchuk in video statement at the project’s official launch.

“I’m very proud we were able to work through all the barriers to get us here today,” said Babchuk, a past chair of the SRD board.

“This is going to be paramount to the rural, remote Indigenous communities who’ve been struggling without this connectivity for many years, and will allow them to plug into government services like emergency management, BC Telehealth, and distance education.”

Chief Kevin Peacey of the Klahoose Nation said work is getting underway to drop cable in the community’s main village in Squirrel Cove on Cortes.

“We’re happy we’ll finally have fast-speed internet,” Peacey said, adding there are affordable package deals available as part of the project.

“It’s also created work for some of our members that will continue throughout the year.”

Canada’s continuing connectivity gap

The federal government has promised to provide all Canadians with access to internet download speeds of at least 50 megabits per second and 10 MBPS to upload, as well as unlimited data by 2030.

While 99 per cent of urban households nationwide already met the minimum threshold as of 2019, only 46 per cent of rural households did.

And that drops to 35 per cent for households on First Nations reserves.

The pandemic only underscored how essential equitable access to the internet is as people are forced to work, study, and get health services virtually, said Karen Barnes, chair of the Council of Canadian Academies panel tasked with identifying systemic connectivity barriers.

“It’s really about basic rights,” said Barnes, former president of Yukon University.

“We expect Canadians to have equal access to all of those things and yet it's not true.”

The lack of internet service in rural, remote and predominantly Indigenous communities has been a problem for decades, and the harms are growing more severe as most aspects of day-to-day life move online, she said, adding it also stifles economic development.

More and more government and financial services are virtual, as is access to markets and customers for entrepreneurs or businesses, she said.

“I think it’s about equality. If people can’t access (services), they’re left behind.”

And internet speed alone doesn’t guarantee digital equity, said Barnes, adding it’s also a question of ensuring connectivity is affordable, reliable and that communities have digital literacy supports in place.

Internet is often more costly in remote communities and governments tend to assume that people have the financial resources and technological hardware readily available if the services are provided, she said.

“COVID-19 really emphasized the need for people to have good access at a reasonable price because there were lots of families that just couldn't let their kids connect with school because they couldn't pay for the service,” she said.

The CCA panel determined what constitutes “high-speed” internet is also a moving target, and the government’s 50/10 threshold by 2030 won’t keep pace with internet advances.

Near symmetrical upload and download speeds are necessary to take advantage of applications like video conferencing, now essential for work, school and medical appointments.

Better upload speeds also allow the transfer of expert knowledge and innovative entrepreneurial services and goods out of remote Indigenous communities, rather than relegating them to being passive users, Barnes said.

“If they had good access and reliable access at a reasonable price, we could see a whole lot of entrepreneurship and leadership coming out of those communities,” Banes said.

“And that would be good for all of Canada.”

Rochelle Baker / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer