Fibre transport could solve North’s telecom problems, Arctic Fibre says

The CRTC's or federal government's subsidies for rolling out fibre “transport” infrastructure in Canada’s northern territories would be a long-term solution to the high cost of connecting the North’s Internet, voice and mobile signals to the rest of Canada, Geoff Batstone, legal counsel for Arctic Fibre Inc., told a panel of CRTC commissioners. “We believe that the high cost of transport between the North and the South is key to solving many of the issues that are being discussed in this proceeding,” Batstone said in Whitehorse Wednesday during the second day of CRTC hearings into northern telecom services provided by Northwestel Inc., a BCE Inc. subsidiary. “As you know, backhaul to many locations in Northwestel’s serving territory is currently provided on a monopoly basis and without a competitive alternative to that form of backhaul, we believe those costs are likely to remain very high," he said. Internet and wireless service providers like Northwestel and BCE use transport or “backhaul” telecom links to carry telecom signals over long distances. Paul Flaherty, Northwestel’s president and CEO, told commissioners on Monday, the first day of the hearing, that the company is unable to offer Internet services that meet CRTC speed targets in 38 northern communities that are served by satellite backhaul. He said the cost of satellite backhaul, which connects those communities to the worldwide Internet, is “the big challenge” to improving service speeds. Batstone said Wednesday that satellite operator Telesat has a monopoly on backhaul services in those communities, leading to high transport costs that make it “very difficult to supply the amount of bandwidth that’s required to provide the types of services that the customers want.” He said demand for bandwidth will rise as new Internet technologies become available in coming years, and that subsidies to reduce the cost of satellite backhaul services will be unable to keep pace with demand. “To the extent that these services are provided over satellite, you’re always going to be chasing the expectations of the customers because satellite simply will not be able to deliver the amount of bandwidth at a cost that’s sufficiently low that the customers can afford it,” he said. “Propping up the existing satellite backhaul approach is simply not future proof.” The Wire Report reported last year that Arctic Fibre has proposed a fibre Internet network that would connect Tokyo to New York City and London via Canada’s northern lands and waters. That network, which could move a total of 32 terabits of data every second, would reserve 40 Gbps of that capacity for domestic Internet backbone use across the Canadian Arctic, bringing “virtually unlimited bandwidth” to 52 per cent of Nunavut’s population, and to parts of Labrador, Northern Quebec, and the Northwest Territories, Doug Cunningham, president of Arctic Fibre, said in a phone interview last summer. Cunningham told commissioners Wednesday that a proposed second phase of the fibre buildout would add “spurs” to the company’s core network to connect it to the majority of Nunavut’s remote communities. If completed, he said, the network would reach 98 per cent of the population of Nunavut and Nunavik, Que. “We’ve solved the problem for 52 per cent of the Nunavut population, but we’ve created a problem for the other 48 per cent,” he said, adding that the $237 million second phase could be completed with subsidies of between $28 million and $30 million per year. Stephen Schmidt, chief regulatory legal counsel with Telus Corp., told commissioners Wednesday that satellite provider Telesat should be “involved” in coming up with solutions to the North’s high telecom costs. He said neither Northwestel nor its competitor, SSi Micro Ltd., have control over the cost of satellite backhaul. “Both parties purchase satellite backhaul from Telesat. Telesat is a Canadian carrier, but they are not in the room with us today. They are not a party to the proceeding and no one has put a single question to them about this issue,” Schmidt said. “It may well be that we are devising remedies targeted at the wrong party,” he said of the hearings’ focus on Northwestel’s role in delivering northern telecom services. “Whatever the ultimate remedy, it seems troubling and incomplete to be proceeding in the absence of this protagonist. Telesat should be involved in explaining the problem and in proposing appropriate solutions," he said. Telesat did not provide comments for this story by deadline Wednesday. Also Wednesday, Lisa Badenhorst, a senior policy adviser in the Yukon government's department of economic development, said the CRTC should require Northwestel to make broadband Internet access available as part of its “basic service objective,” which outlines mandatory services providers must offer to their subscribers. “The Yukon government believes that the concept of basic service should include broadband access and that there must be flexibility in determining how that standard will be achieved in particular communities, including the extent to which subsidy funding is needed,” Badenhorst said. Schmidt told commissioners that it would be “premature” to include broadband in Northwestel’s basic service obligation as part of the current hearing because the commission is planning to hold a separate hearing to consider whether broadband should become a basic service across the country. “This is not just about the North,” Schmidt said. “This issue has a national dimension and it should not be determined in isolation from the interests or views of other Canadians and industry participants.” The hearing, which started Monday in Inuvik, N.W.T., will conclude with replies from the hearing parties on Thursday. —With reporting by Nicholas Kyonka and nkyonka@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Fibre transport could solve North’s telecom problems, Arctic Fibre says

News | 06/19/2013 10:00 pm EDT

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