Broadband task force finalizing draft in preparation for May 31 deadline

The National Broadband Task Force will spend its next two meetings finalizing its recommendations to government on how to rollout high-speed Internet across Canada before presenting its final report at the end of May. The group tentatively approved 30 draft recommendations at its third monthly meeting on March 8. The recommendations will be more fully ratified at its April 12 meeting. As well, the 36-member task force is finishing up work on identifying underserved communities, costing models for different bandwidth scenarios and identifying the barriers – and potential solutions – to developing broadband applications and content. The group’s final meeting of the full committee will be May 10. Task force chair David Johnston says despite the workload, the group is still on schedule to file its final report by May 31. "We’ve tried to be very disciplined with the five meetings we’ve had," he told Network Letter. One longtime advocate of fibre backbone, who chairs the task force’s economic benefits and challenges working group, says they are making progress. "I think we’ve got a good starting point on the highest level on the question of framework," says Andrew Bjerring, president/CEO of CANARIE Inc. "It’s a matter of then translating those principles into some more specific recommendations to the government. I doubt if we’ll go all the way to a very detailed level. I just don’t think there’s time and it may not be appropriate for a committee like ours to do that anyway. But we hope to obviously go further than simply the level of general principles and get into specific recommendations." One challenge the task force faces is coming up with recommendations that won’t become outdated as technology evolves. "Technology changes quickly and one has to be careful not to be frozen at a point of time," says Johnston. "Whatever we recommend, which is really looking especially at the year 2004, people should realize that there will continue to be lots of change between now and then." Serving native communities The task force has received a handful of submissions from groups and individuals interested in the government’s commitment to bring broadband to every community by 2004. A brief from the Naskapi Nation of Kawawachikamach, a first nations community in northeastern Quebec, outlines the problems the community faces in linking to the outside world. Kawawachikamach is connected to Schefferville QC by a gravel road and has train service once a week. Telecommunications links are not much better. The community’s service provider, Télébec Ltée, faces no competition providing telecom services to the natives. The community is linked to Schefferville by fibre optics, but all other communications must be done through satellite to Val d’Or QC. Breakdowns are a frequent occurrence, the band says. "Users at the nation office in Kawawachikamach have observed that, when they are able to connect to the Internet or to a remote computer through a modem, they are unable to do so at speeds exceeding 14.4 Kbps, and that the data transfer rate is often significantly lower than 14.4 Kbps," the Naskapi write. "This situation makes it difficult to conduct business in an efficient manner over the Internet." The nation, it stresses, cannot realize the full potential of the Internet due to prohibitive costs. Currently, the Naskapi must pay their ISP basic fees for access plus LD charges in order to connect. They want to access such services as banking, government information and telehealth, but cannot do so under the present regime. Bjerring says it’s important throughout this process and beyond to listen to people who live in these communities, rather than attempt to impose a blanket solution for the entire country. "We try to identify if there are any fundamental obstacles, aside from the infrastructure issue, that prevent communities from capturing those benefits," he offers. "I think that the general direction of our thinking will be towards the identification of ways in which communities themselves can identify ways of taking advantage of infrastructure developments for their own purposes in terms of economic development."

Broadband task force finalizing draft in preparation for May 31 deadline

News | 03/26/2001 5:00 am EST

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