Connectivity Committee Update
On Friday, March 19th, the Eastern Ontario Regional Network (all the rural municipalities in eastern Ontario including Haliburton County) announced that Rogers is the successful bidder in their Cell Gap project. This is a $300 million initiative (contributions of $71 million each from the federal and provincial gov’ts, $10 million from all the regional/municipal gov’ts combined and $150 million from Rogers, the private sector technology provider) to improve voice cellular connectivity across the region. The goals are to provide 99% of the area with voice calling services; at least 95% of the area with video-app calls, basic app usage and basic level streaming; and at least 85% of the area with high-definition streaming and more data-intensive apps (all cellular-based).
We do not yet have information on whether this will mean improved service for the Kennisis area. Work will begin shortly on improvements to the technology on 300 existing towers across eastern Ontario and will involve the addition of 300-350 towers over the next years. (This may also improve cellular-based data connectivity but as this is out of scope of this project, we do not have information on what Roger’s plans might be in this regard.)
EORN has also formally submitted a proposal to the federal and provincial governments for the “Gig Project”, which would bring high speed/capacity fibre connection to (almost) every property in Eastern Ontario but is costly at $1.2-1.6 billion.
KLCOA has been continuing our dialogue with Bell about the infrastructure around our lake. As part of this, we have been encouraging Bell to bring application for federal Universal Broadband Initiative (UBI) and provincial Improving Connectivity in Ontario (ICON) funding to bring fibre-to-home to properties around the lake. Bell is also working on improving cellular-based data connectivity in our area.
We are expecting announcements by the Ontario Government’s Improving Connectivity for Ontario fund imminently. There were several proposals by Bell, Xplornet and North Frontenac for Haliburton County in the first wave of applications, which if funded, may bring improvements to our area.
There are several different initiatives underway, some of which are complementary, some competitive, and some of which overlap. In recognition that the capital cost to provide enhanced connectivity to rural areas is prohibitive for private sector investment alone, both the provincial and federal governments have established funding streams to facilitate investment. The thinking among the players right now is to submit applications to the federal and provincial funds to see what “sticks”.
A number of Kennisis property owners are now participating in the beta testing of Starlink low-orbit satellite-based service and report good experiences thus far. (KLCOA is not directly involved in this but monitoring individual user experience to learn from it.)
KLCOA is continuing to stay closely involved with Haliburton County and EORN government officials and is coordinating a communications network for Haliburton County lake associations to appropriately advocate for Kennisis property owners on the connectivity issue.