The Information Cow Path
Six Rivers Editorial
We live in the ‘Information Age’ and while most of the world is thriving on the information highway, rural communities are struggling to compete.
The preferred route on the information highway is by high speed. In fact, preferred is no longer the right word. Required, needed, mandatory are far better words to describe today’s need for gathering and sending information.
Like our highway system, the internet depends on inter-connecting pathways. Our roads have super highways, secondary highways, paved roads, gravel roads, and dirt paths. Our internet delivery system looks much the same, with fibre optic, high speed, variable satellite, and good old-fashioned dial-up.
While not everybody needs a super highway at the front door, to be fair and just, everybody does need the fastest possible internet. We don’t need to go to Moncton or Halifax everyday, so our secondary roads suit us just fine for local travel. But when it comes to the internet, we need to reach the far corners of the world every day, and it is becoming more crucial.
Some may think that silly. Perhaps those in business have such need to compete, but surely I can’t mean those people who play or Facebook on the internet. But yes, I do mean those people. Gamers need speed and even those whose pastimes involve social media face ever demanding speed as platforms add video and more sophisticated apps that require bandwidth.
If the internet is to be truly democratizing, then we all need equal access to speed. We cannot empower the larger centres with fibre optic while holding back our rural communities on a cow path.
Today’s economy allows people to work from home, provided they have appropriate internet access. People can operate international businesses from small communities, as long as they can communicate in a timely fashion. Computer engineers can create and collaborate from almost anywhere, but only with optimum internet.
Our current internet distribution system not only favours large communities, it is sounding the death knell to our smallest. We have watched our rural communities shrink in favour of the cities, and the unequal distribution of internet access is hastening that exodus.
Many brilliant minds are currently operating growing businesses from one man shops and collaborative enterprises, but they congregate in cities where speed is available. The nature of business today cannot be sustained on a digital subscriber line (DSL), let alone dial-up.
For most of rural Nova Scotia, the best we can look forward to is DSL or some form of satellite offering which sends at one speed and receives at another, not to mention that it begins to fail when the weather is bad. Our competition, meanwhile is light years ahead on “Fibe”.
Take my personal experience. Because of where I live, I had but one choice, the Pugwash River Mutual Telephone Company. Bet you never heard of it. My phone company, the last privately owned telecom in Canada, has exclusive rights for a small area along the Pugwash River. It has a handful of subscribers and depends on a link to the Bell network to provide its service.
It took three weeks to get phone service while the lone employee was busy with his blueberries. It took more time to adjust my internet because I mistakenly called Bell, the actual internet provider, who could not find me in their system. Eventually they concluded I was not their customer, and referred the matter to the Pugwash River telco. Again the man had to leave his blueberry harvester to make a service call.
As cute as it is to be part of the last true phone pioneers and have my near neighbour as my phone man, in this day and age of high speed communications, it does not wash.
Today’s ‘exclusive markets’ are the design of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). When originally set-up, the commission was to be the watchdog for the public in a high tech industry that few might understand. Over the years, the CRTC became protector to the telecom companies. Under their watch, Bell Canada, Rogers, and the cable TV companies became wealthy and powerful. Even after some deregulation, the CRTC stood watch over the growth of new telephone companies, which also have become wealthy. It is easy to see that Canadians have been fleeced while Bell and Rogers in particular have amassed media control the likes of which our country had never seen.
It is time that the CRTC stopped protecting the powerfully wealthy, corporate suppliers and began protecting the public consumers in the way the commission was intended. Stop the pretence of competition. Stop the gouging. Start regulating in the best interest of the consumer, or get out of the way and open the telecommunications market to free choice and true competition.
Above all, treat rural Canadians the same as our urban cousins. We may choose to live off the beaten path when it comes to paved highways, but we deserve equal access to the information highway.