The Recognizing Rural Communities discussion was led by former MP and Conservative Party interim leader Candice Bergen and consisted of two panels, one with politicians and one with industry stakeholders.

Why it matters: Increased connectivity and incentives in rural areas could lead to economic growth.

Bergen said federal politicians must better understand that Canada has a diversity of rural communities and different approaches are needed to meet their specific needs.

“They’re all rural, but they all can be very different in terms of the challenges that they face. Many of those challenges can only be addressed through a really focused effort, sector by sector.”

Accessible broadband internet and the need for reliable web connectivity in rural areas was a primary focus.

Gudie Hutchings, minister of rural economic development, spoke about her experience with this issue in the largely rural riding of Long Range Mountains in western Newfoundland.

“Before the pandemic shifted our lives more online and transformed basically how we lived, it was clear we had a connectivity gap in Canada, especially in rural Canada,” Hutchings said.

“We heard from rural Canadians that broadband internet was the equalizer for economic development and for life.”

She said broadband can help long-distance learning, career support and medical care and “it’s given families peace of mind.”

Dan Mazier, shadow minister of rural economic development, called rural Canada “the lifeline that fuels our country’s growth and prosperity,” but also acknowledged the gap in internet access that could prevent rural Canada from reaching its full potential.

“That means unlocking our abundant natural resources, including our energy and agriculture, not only for ourselves, but for the rest of the world.

“However, to fully harness this potential, we must address a pressing need, the need for high-speed internet and cellular connectivity.”

The first panel, Putting Rural Canada on the National Agenda, featured Liberal MP Francis Drouin, Conservative MP Lianne Rood and NDP MP Taylor Bachrach.

Drouin said a major concern in his Ontario riding of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell is the “exodus” of youth to Ottawa and Montreal, noting it is a challenge to draw talent back to rural parts of his riding.

“Remote working, that’s a huge opportunity for us now, but we need access to internet.”

Bachrach said rural communities need people who really want to live there.

“What do we need to do to ensure that rural communities are stable over time? That they’re able to recruit people who want to move to rural communities, not just for a job, not just to get in, make a buck and get out, (that) want to move to rural communities to set up a life for themselves?”

Bachrach also mentioned the challenge to recruit health-care professionals.

“We’re seeing emergency rooms put on diversion, people having to travel to other communities to access emergency services because there aren’t enough doctors.

“We need to ask ourselves: how do we create vibrant and sustainable communities that doctors and nurses want to move to?”

Rood said rural Canadians do not have enough options for fibre-optic internet.

“Connectivity, ‘the last mile.’ We hear that a lot across the country, simply not having access even to basic cell phone service in some areas where, you know, farmers are very reliant on technology now, more than most people realize,” she said.

“Not having access to cell phone service, to the internet, availability to run the programs in their tractors, when you’re field mapping or you’re trying to test different places in your soil, it makes it very difficult.”

Rood also mentioned the carbon tax as a factor that “penalizes rural Canadians over urban Canadians” due to lack of public transit.

Investment and growth

The second panel, Business and investment in Rural Canada, included Forest Products Association of Canada CEO Derek Nighbor, Canadian Telecoms Association CEO and former P.E.I. premier Robert Ghiz and Cathy Jo Noble of the National Cattle Feeders’ Association.

Ghiz said connectivity is “one of the themes to the solution.”

“We want to be able to connect more people. The more customers you have, the better off you do.”
But cost is a problem.

“To be able to connect that … last mile, could be the last hundred miles or thousand miles. It becomes very cost-prohibitive.”

Ghiz said most Canadians have access to broadband internet but the disparity grows when looking at rural communities.

“If you look at rural Canada today, rural Canada is only 67 per cent connected to home internet. That’s a lot of connectivity that needs to take place.”

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Growing up in rural Manitoba, where our telephone “party line” was shared by six large families, connectivity was often a topic of discussion. Sometimes the line was in use when you wanted it. Sometimes there was a little too much connectivity because the neighbour kids liked to listen in when the boyfriend called. 

The late Gilbert Alexander Muir, formerly the chief engineer for the government-owned Manitoba Telephone System, wrote a whimsical history for the Manitoba Historical Society back in the 1960s of how the province became a North American leader in telecom services. Despite the utilitarian title, “A History of the Telephone in Manitoba,” Muir wrote a fun story well worth the read. 

“In our age of jet transportation, space communications, computer technology and data transmission, the remembrances of the age in which the telephone took hold seems strange — like the tin-plated pictures in the family albums of yesteryear showing frock-coated grandfather, arms akimbo staring grimly at the camera,” he wrote.

Here’s the condensed version. Alexander Graham Bell discovered the telephone in 1876. The first telephones came to Winnipeg two years later. Bell’s patent expired in 1893. The resulting competition that saw linemen from competing companies cutting each other’s lines or sawing off their poles prompted the Manitoba government to take over responsibility for telecom services in 1908. 

By the Roaring Twenties, almost every corner of Manitoba was linked to the rest of Canada, the United States and several overseas points. Accomplishing all of that spanned five decades. 

By comparison, the internet was first discovered in 1983, and nearly 40 years later, we are nowhere near to having rural Canadians connected beyond the most rudimentary levels — if at all.

The Council of Canadian Academies report “Waiting to Connect: The Expert Panel on High-Throughput Networks for Rural and Remote Communities in Canada” is a not-so-fun read, but nonetheless worthwhile as it zeroes in on the urgency for a better strategy.

“Compared to urban centres, broadband connectivity in rural and remote regions has generally been characterized by slower transmission speeds, less availability, and higher costs,” it says. 

Nationwide, more than half of rural households lack access to services meeting the federal target, compared to just 1.4 per cent of urban households. 

Plus, rural Canada is falling further behind. Even if the current strategy, which relies heavily on providing incentives to the private sector, meets the target by 2030 of getting everyone in Canada up to those speeds (woefully slow by even 2021 standards), urban Canada has already progressed far beyond. And the pace of change is accelerating. 

“The reliance on market-based mechanisms to fund broadband connectivity programs in rural and remote communities has consistently failed to deliver levels of service comparable to those available in urban Canada,” the report says.

The authors note that the pandemic has sharpened focus on the impact of these connectivity gaps. People living in underserved communities were less able to function virtually, students were shut out of education, and patients have been unable to access health care. 

It is not just about delivering access. Adoption rates are lower in rural Canada as well.

Incomes tend to be lower, which makes the higher cost of service less affordable. Digital literacy is lower and there is a lack of IT support when things go wrong. 

Indigenous communities are particularly hard-hit by these factors, which places them at a disproportionate disadvantage. 

In a nutshell, the report says improving access and adoption is not only fundamental to the future of rural Canada, it’s an important path toward our reconciliation of historic wrongs.

The story of connecting rural Canada via broadband has yet to be finished, but it’s becoming clearer that more of the same is not our path to a happy ending.

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Why it matters: Reliable, high speed internet is critical as more rural residents and farmers conduct business on-line.

As part of the province’s 2020 budget released Nov. 5, an additional $680 million over six years was added to the existing $315 million in Up to Speed: Ontario’s Broadband and Cellular Action Plan.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced days later the federal government will invest an additional $750 million to the already promised $1 billion to the Universal Broadband Fund over the next six years. The Rapid Response Stream will see $150 million for shovel-ready projects across Canada and the rest will be invested in an agreement with Telesat, a Canadian satellite company.

The money is another big boost to address the need to connect Canadians outside of cities to high speed internet.

“With the world online these days, if we are going to attract more investment to Ontario and compete in this highly competitive global marketplace, we need every part of our province connected with high-speed internet,” said Premier Doug Ford.

Within the funding announcement the Improving Connectivity in Ontario (ICON) program will see a doubling of its funding to $300 million with a leveraging potential of $900 million in total partner funding.

Trudeau said using Telesat’s low-earth-orbit satellite capacity would improve connectivity and expand high-speed internet coverage for far north, rural and remote regions.

Navdeep Bains, federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry said access to high-speed internet is a top priority for rural and remote Canadians.

“High-speed internet is more than just a convenience — it means opportunity. It enables physicians to see patients from a distance,” said Bains. “It allows businesses to reach customers around the world and it allows students in one classroom to connect with their peers in other parts of the country.”

Rural households the internet have-nots

Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) data shows more than 1.4 million people across the province do not have broadband or cellular access and about 10 per cent of households, mostly in rural, remote or northern areas, are underserved or unserved in a broadband perspective.

Keith Currie, Ontario Federation of Agriculture president, said the investment is going to benefit all of society.

“You’ll be able to get the 5G in place fairly quickly,” said Currie. “That opens up the door for much better broadband internet service to lots of parts of Ontario, including Northern Ontario.”

Currie said it’s not feasible to run fibre optic cables through Northern Ontario but putting up towers to service broadband and cellular service makes sense.

Bringing Northern Ontario connectivity on par with the rest of the province is key due to the opportunities opening up in the region, he said.

“As our climate changes it will open up more and more opportunities for raising more corn product out there and raising more livestock. Part of being able to do that is having adequate services.”

Currie said agriculture is increasingly automated, in part due to the labour shortage, so access to technology is vital.

Sharing the big internet pipes

Having fibre and broadband infrastructure is an important first step, said Allan Thompson, Rural Ontario Municipal Association chair.

A next step would be to make internet access an essential service.

He hopes it leads to all the fibre being linked to 151 Front Street in Toronto.

That address is home to the country’s largest telecom nerve centre, or “carrier hotel” where telecom, internet service providers and content companies collocate to exchange traffic between their networks.

“We have a lot of dark fibre, a lot of fibre that’s already owned by several groups,” Thompson said. “When it’s made an essential service it gets them to share the use of that fibre especially for backhaul or light up some of that dark fibre that’s owned by railways etc.”

Thompson said if everyone shared access to the fibre everyone would benefit from the cost recovery.

“It’s like if Ford put money into the 407 (highway) and only Ford cars could drive on it,” he said. “That’s what we have right now, and what we need is that open to everybody.”

Southwestern Integrated Fibre Technology (SWIFT) and Eastern Ontario Regional Network (EORN) are pushing companies to invest in kilometres, not population, when connecting rural areas.

“They only want to go where there’s population, but we’ve got to go where it’s kilometres,” he said. “Especially when we get to the rural areas, there are a lot of big users out there that can really benefit.”

Thompson said it’s similar to the struggle of getting natural gas down rural roads to service big grain elevators, poultry farms and other agriculture business that would benefit. Companies aren’t looking at the big picture and how they could recoup their costs by covering those kilometres instead of focusing on population.

Thompson said the Ontario government appears committed to investing in broadband and cellular infrastructure.

“They’ve definitely listened and they’re trying to deliver — I give them full marks. I’m not knocking them down,” he said. “They’re really trying to make this province work for the people and I’m grateful for it.”

However, he said if the province made it an essential service the dots would get connected quicker.

“We believe that we should have broadband in every house and every business in Ontario,” said Ernie Hardeman, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. “We have to be careful because we want to use not only the money we’re putting in, we want to get buy-in from the private sector to be a partner in this too.”

Hardeman said he believes the $1 billion total investment from the province will go a long way. However, if the federal government agreed to a 60-40 cost-sharing arrangement, as is done in many agriculture programs, that would propel the projects further.

“Let’s get as much of it built as we can so everybody has it,” he said.

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Producers know most agricultural towns have broadband, but in the country, cell service fades. Telematics produced by farm equipment have to be stored, getting pushed to the cloud at the farmyards while IoT devices use networks, like LoRaWAn. Network-controlled automation is impossible in many areas.

New technology in agriculture, such as self-driving tractors, precision water uses or blockchains, can make a farm more efficient and sustainable, but a strong cellphone signal, or internet, is needed to make it work.

Consumers who want well-sourced, sustainable food and a story behind it have little understanding what any of this technology means, or does, or even exists.

Farmers haven’t told them. It is an untold chapter in the story of our food.

But if consumers knew about it, even a little bit, they might start realizing the need for better rural internet.

I’m lucky to live in a diverse city, surrounded by tons of millennials who have little knowledge of modern agriculture and big ideas about ensuring their food is sustainable and environmentally friendly.

The modern-day consumer is just trying to do the right thing in a world where it’s sometimes easy, but usually really hard, to figure out what the right thing actually is.

Vertical farming is an easy sell as the right thing to do, in part because it’s simple to explain to the consumer.

The disruptive technology is helping reduce food waste from harvest or travel, and the companies making these automated growing systems boast of reducing the geographic footprint of farming, lowering labour costs and decreasing water usage.

Plus, reliable crop yields.

Urban consumers love this stuff.

It seems like the right thing to do and it’s easy enough to understand.

The trouble is there isn’t even close to enough vertical farming to feed the country, let alone the world. Consumers trying to find the right thing to do can’t rely on vertical farming to meet their demands.

Thankfully, farmers are trying to do the right thing, too.

They’re adopting precision agriculture tools to become more sustainable by using technology to manage inputs and reduce waste.

But to do so on a wide scale, they’ll need access to the internet.

If consumers understand the role internet access plays in the story of making their food sustainable, they will realize the right thing to do is to ensure farmers can have that access.

Rural communities alone don’t have enough political pull to convince wide scale government investment in improving universal broadband services.

Canada’s major telecoms don’t have enough of a business incentive to take it upon themselves and improve services, either.

Governments seem unsure of where or how to build out networks in an affordable way and, despite making investments or commitments, appear to be hoping if they wait long enough, the private sector will figure it out for them.

One of those wait-and-see private sector plays is Elon Musk’s StarLink. The public relations pro and Tesla founder is planning to launch low-orbit satellites to bring internet to remote places. It is likely years away from being successful, despite its huge potential.

Regional investment strategies between the telecoms and industry have promise, but aren’t happening on a wide scale.

Farmers should include the way they are using technology, and their need for the internet to do so, with the story of the food they are producing for consumers.

In turn, consumers who want to reduce the carbon intensity of their food should advocate for better rural internet.

If there is enough will among consumers —voters — then universal internet can become a reality.

It’s the right thing to do.

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According to company representatives, part of achieving these overarching goals involves establishing better connectivity and promoting tech adoption on the farm.

Why it matters: Rural internet access and the inability to efficiently share data between technologies continue to be major issues in the agriculture sector. Addressing these problems comprises part of Telus’ wider digitization plan for global food production.

A new divisions called Telus Agriculture was announced by company executives in a public web presentation on November 12, 2020. The new entity is globally focused, and leverages expertise and manpower from a wide swath of the food and agribusiness sector. This includes a number of previously and soon-to-be-acquired agricultural companies (e.g. AFS Technologies and Agrian, companies based in Florida and California respectively), as well as a range of other partners and consultants.

Darren Entwistle, chief executive officer for Telus, said the new division will “connect stakeholders across the entire agricultural ecosystem” in an effort to “optimize food production” as the global population continues to spike.

Recent pandemic-induced plant closures and other supply chain disruptions were mentioned as examples of current vulnerabilities, though ones preventable with better connectivity. Another example included the ability to reduce food waste by developing digital tools which allow retailers to track the temperature of a product through the entire supply chain.

Data silos, rural broadband

Telus Agriculture, as described by the company, has three overarching facets within its business strategy – the promotion of data transparency, elimination of data silos via the Internet of Thing, and a universal extension of top-tier internet connectivity.

For rural broadband – a long-standing issue in the farming community – Entwistle says the company intends to establish “a symmetrical urban and rural experience.”

Regarding siloed data systems and transparency, the company’s group president Francois Gratton indicated Telus intends to use strategies previously employed in its forays into the healthcare sector. Indeed, Gratton says lagging technology adoption, isolated participants, and poor data flow were and are issues common to both healthcare and agriculture.

Interconnected value chains

Establishing free flowing information for all stakeholders – that is, linking farm production data all the way to consumer plates, and everywhere between – is the company’s fundamental goal, and one requiring progress in the aforementioned areas.

Needs and opportunities where such systems could make a difference include proof of food sustainability, nutrition, and safety. Improvements in the continuity of supply, in overall trust, and higher profitability would be the result, according to those unveiling the new company division.

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In a world where we all needed good connectivity, many didn’t have it.

Those who had it found it slowed down, according to OpenMedia, an internet watch organization. Rural internet has slowed down since the pandemic hit, compared to urban connectivity that already has many times the digital download speed.

Politicians and business leaders have noticed. If the door is opened, it’s time to wedge it open permanently.

There are politicians making the right noises. The province recently re-announced its $150 million program to expand rural internet.

The federal government will shortly be accepting applications for its rural internet program, valued at about $1 billion.

The goal is to have 95 per cent of Canadians with at least 50 megabits per second download speed by 2026.

Government programs with big budgets have a sad history of overspending and underperformance. That’s my worry with the grand rural internetificiation project.

What bugs me is that we’ve managed to spread important services to every household in the country before with both the electrification of Canada as well as the running of phone lines to everyone across the country.

The lines got to homes in rural areas and urban centres, although it took a while.

There were two different models used in electricity and telephony.

The growth of electricity was regional and based on local initiative. It’s only more recently that local electricity utilities have been sold to Hydro One.

The phone system was, in most of the country, constructed under a monopoly by either government-owned companies or Bell Canada.

The billions of dollars riding on moving high-speed internet to the rest of the country are enticing for companies in the business. The government will be tempted to give the money to larger players due to the efficiency of that process.

Xplornet, which has tried for years to supply rural internet through satellite, continues to be focused on rural, and has a new owner in New York-based Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, so it will have access to the capital needed to continue to compete.

However, there needs to be significant local input and preferably local rollout of high speed internet. The best cases today of efficient and quick fibre provision are found in smaller companies, often co-operatives and driven by local needs. They are getting the job done today, compared to some of the larger players who continue to move slowly. Bell Canada recently announced it was accelerating its rural internet project.

Smaller companies, who have spent the last 10 to 15 years providing service to rural areas should also have a kick at the funds. They’ve put in the time, helping to bring at least a small level of internet access to rural areas.

I recently upgraded my internet access to the highest available, but that’s 25 mbps, half of the government suggested download speed. But 25 mbps will still allow us to do most of what we need to do. Others are stuck at three mbps download, if they can get it.

Fibre lines are available two concessions east and a concession to the west of where I live, but the cooperatives that have installed them say they are waiting on more government funding, and aren’t suggesting that fibre will ever come down roads that aren’t heading to a larger population centre.

Fibre optic cable should be the top priority for every internet installation. It’s the backbone that we need and it can carry data hundreds of times faster than most point to point systems.

Satellite internet is another fast-emerging option, although the newest generation of satellites will be hampered by the fact the public could avoid satellite internet unless it’s the last option. That’s because satellite internet options have been of poor quality, with slow speeds and unstable signal.

Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk is in the process of launching a constellation of small satellites that will circle the Earth and provide up to 600 mbps service. Sixty satellites were launched in January and four more launches will be required to provide service across North America. However, parts of Canada and the U.S. could see the system tested by the end of 2020.

The need to get Canadians equal access to internet has never been more stark. It’s time to get it done.

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For years, Canadians living in rural areas have complained of poor internet.

These complaints were not entirely ignored, as government’s have made significant investments to improve rural broadband.

But the digital divide still existing today highlights how imperative it is for governments to address the issue.

In a matter of weeks, millions of Canadians started performing their job functions from home. External challenges – like childcare – notwithstanding, this transition was amazingly seamless for many.

Home office video chats replaced board room meetings and instant messaging took over for water cooler conversations.

It clearly showed why having a reliable internet connection had been deemed essential by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

New targets were laid out in 2016, with CRTC challenging service providers to offer customers across the country access to minimum download speeds of at least 50 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of at least 10 Mbps.

Today, according to CRTC, 85.7 per cent of Canadians have access to those options, but it’s only offered in 40.8 per cent of rural communities.

In plain speak, well over half of the people living in rural communities don’t have access to what the federal government has deemed as the minimum speed target for internet access.

Those statistics were having real impacts before the world moved to conducting pretty much every aspect of life – including socializing – online.

Canadians living in rural communities continue to face hardships resulting from social isolation, and those issues are aggravated by the required social distancing needed to combat COVID-19.

They are also often forced to pay higher prices for internet services less reliable than what Canadians in urban areas are offered.

According to recently released polling from Manitoba’s Keystone Agricultural Producers, almost two thirds of Manitobans surveyed expressed dissatisfaction with their mobile phone and internet coverage.

“With thousands of Manitobans stuck in their homes and relying on internet connections to accomplish important tasks like educating their children, we are all aware that present service levels are unacceptable with daily disruptions,” said Jill Verwey, KAP vice president and chair of the rural policy committee in a press release. “The best time to fix these gaps was five years ago, the second-best time is now.”

In the last federal budget, the federal government committed to ensuring 95 per cent of Canadian homes and businesses have access to the minimum Internet speeds by 2026, and 100 per cent by 2030.

The announcement came with money attached: $1.7 billion over 13 years. Additional money, bringing the total to roughly $6 billion, was also announced to help reach the goal through infrastructure funding and facilitate additional co-ordination with provinces.

COVID-19 should expediate those timelines.

Consider that short and long-term target and its associated cost in the context of spending the federal government has laid out to combat the impacts of the pandemic.

In a matter of days, $27 billion in spending was approved to help Canadians facing hardship as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Understandably, internet access won’t top the list of priorities for many Canadians when outlining how and where they want pandemic response spending to go – but perhaps the 2030 timeline of having 100 per cent access of fast and reliable internet for all Canadians can be expedited.

The short and long-term health of rural Canada depends on it.

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Bell Canada says it will cut 200,000 households from its rural expansion program because the CRTC decision cost it $100 million.

Why it matters: The federal government’s efforts to address the slow expansions of rural internet services could slow things down further.

“The CRTC’s decision transfers capital from providers like Bell who are building Canada’s modern broadband networks to wholesale resellers that invest little to nothing – and there’s no assurance or requirement from the CRTC that any of it will be dedicated to network buildouts or otherwise passed on to Canadian consumers,” said Mirko Bibic, Bell’s chief operating officer. “Putting this kind of unexpected and retroactive tax on capital investment is not the way to ensure the continued development of Canada’s internet infrastructure.”

Despite Bell’s plan to use non-fibre options to reach more rural Canadians, other organizations, especially smaller telecommunications co-operatives and companies, are the ones that have been building infrastructure in small towns, especially in southern Ontario.

Quadro Communications, in Kirkton, for example has been slowly purchasing telephone exchanges from Bell and supplying customers in those exchanges with wired, high-speed internet.

The CRTC’s forced cut in wholesale pricing would make it easier for those local companies to make investments in internet services. It is also expected that rates for internet service could fall if there’s more competition driven by lower wholesale rates.

The CRTC final wholesale rates are as much as 77 per cent lower than the 2016 interim rates.

Eastlink, a major internet provider in the Atlantic provinces announced it was cutting $50 million from its investment plans because of the CRTC rate cut.

The rates are retroactive and require the major internet backbone providers to pay other providers.

High speed internet in rural areas has been identified as a priority by the federal and provincial governments, both of which are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to have service expanded.

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Bernadette Jordan, Minister of Rural Economic Development, released Rural Opportunities, National Prosperity concurrently with High-Speed Access for All: Canada’s Connectivity Strategy.

She said consultations pointed to high-speed broadband as the most immediate need in rural areas.

Why it matters: About 20 per cent of Canadians live and work in rural communities and high speed Internet access has been identified as a key obstacle to rural business competitiveness.

Jordan said the common themes identified by people she met with included the desire to maintain strong local economies, the need to attract workers and the need for new or improved infrastructure.

“Time and again, rural Canadians have identified unreliable and slow Internet connectivity as their number one challenge,” says the rural opportunities strategy.

The connectivity strategy says the government will, as announced in the 2019 budget, spend $1.7 billion over 13 years to connect rural and remote areas.

It will also launch a broadband portal so municipalities can see what funding they can access, improve mapping so rural municipalities can see where gaps exist and better fill them, make additional wireless spectrum available and develop smaller licensing tiers for the wireless spectrum so rural communities can be separate from major cities.

Jordan noted there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

“It is not a top-down solution, but a roadmap for growth based on rural input, which complements our government’s ongoing support for growing the middle class, advancing reconciliation with Indigenous people and supporting diversity across the country,” she said in a statement presenting the rural strategy.

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New Brunswick-based Xplornet Communications on Monday announced an all-cash $28.75 million deal with Victoria-based Vecima Networks for the “remaining assets” of Vecima’s YourLink business.

YourLink, based in Saskatoon, is a major wireless service provider for rural Saskatchewan, offering fixed broadband wireless data and telephone access for residential and business users.

The company in mid-2015 announced major expansions and upgrades of its Saskatchewan network, for which it picked up $4.63 million in federal funding. Those expansions are expected to connect over 40,000 additional homes by the end of April next year, at a minimum speed of five MB per second.

YourLink, Xplornet said, “will continue to operate and deliver its high-quality services in Saskatchewan while integrating operations into Xplornet regional and national delivery teams.”

The deal involves a payment of $20 million, made Thursday, with the $8.75 million balance to follow before the end of the second calendar quarter of 2017, Vecima said.

The deal is subject to the usual closing conditions and regulatory approvals, including transfer of radio spectrum licenses, Vecima said.

Vecima CEO Sumit Kumar said Monday the company’s “strategic priority” in the past five years has been to “monetize non-core assets and focus on our core technology business.”

Vecima, which makes broadband hardware mainly for the business services market, in the past five years has also shed its BC Cable business and “excess” radio spectrum and real estate, including a former manufacturing facility in Saskatoon.

“We are confident that our vision to extend the reach of broadband to more people in Saskatchewan will now be pursued by a highly focused national broadband service provider that is dedicated to building a stronger, more connected digital Canada.”

The deal “will increase our fixed wireless broadband footprint in Saskatchewan and support Xplornet’s mission to make affordable, fast and reliable broadband Internet services available to rural Canadians,” Xplornet CEO Allison Lenehan said in a release.

Xplornet said the YourLink deal is “complementary” to its own operations; Lenehan said the company believes the deal “will allow us to provide even more value for YourLink customers.”

Xplornet said Monday it plans to further expand its own network with “continued extension” of its LTE coverage and the launch of two new satellites offering internet download speeds “not previously seen in many parts of rural Canada.”

Areas of Saskatchewan that were earmarked for expanded YourLink high-speed service through the company’s 2015 plan included Albertville, Battleford, Carruthers, Dinsmore, Estevan, Loon Lake, Melfort, Moose Jaw, Nipawin, North Battleford, Prince Albert, Rouleau, Swift Current, Tompkins, Wakaw Lake, Weldon and Yorkton. — AGCanada.com Network

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