All Canadian households will have 50/10 speeds by 2030: Morneau

OTTAWA — The Liberal government is announcing $1.7 billion in new rural broadband funding over the next 13 years, aimed at closing the speed gap between rural and urban Canada. It's part of an overall rural broadband plan announced in the Trudeau government's final budget before the next election, tabled in Parliament Tuesday, which includes billions in expected public and private investments through the Canada Infrastructure Bank. The plan comes with new targets of having 95 per cent of Canadian homes and businesses meet the CRTC's basic service standard of 50/10 Mbps by 2026 -- and then a full 100 per cent at that level by 2030. Attached satellite investments are expected to service hard-to-reach Northern communities to meet that standard by the deadline. Finance Minister Bill Morneau pledged Tuesday that by 2030, every Canadian home will have access to high-speed internet regardless of where they are in the country. The budget document notes that while the government expects 90 per cent of Canadians to reach those speeds by 2021, that will still leave 1.5 million households underserved. The $1.7 billion funding chunk comes in a new package called the Universal Broadband Fund, programmed out over the next 13 years. It will be run by Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED), and will focus on projects that extend backbone infrastructure to underserved communities. The budget document said it "may" also support funding for last-mile connections. Included in that overall figure is an $85 million top-up for its 2016 Connect to Innovate rural broadband funding program, and $600 million in funding for securing "advanced, new, low-latency Low Earth Orbit satellite capacity." The process for the satellite funding will be launched in spring this year, but details on the Universal Broadband Fund were sparse. Specifics on the process, timelines and how the program relates to Connect to Innovate are still to come. The envelope for the new funding projects $26 million for this year, and would reach up to $717 million in funding over a period of five years, according to the budget projections. Last year, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities requested the government commit $4 billion over a decade to address the connectivity gap -- something that came up in debate in the House of Commons recently as the NDP called for more funding to boost rural internet connectivity. Morneau boasted at a budget press conference Tuesday afternoon that the Liberals expect somewhere in the tune of $5-6 billion in combined public and private sector investments for rural broadband to be made over the next decade. The budget documentation refers to that as its new, "coordinated" national broadband funding plan. That sizable figure includes estimated private sector investments yet to be secured, and past projects, such as the Accelerated Investment Incentive and the CRTC's $750 million broadband fund. The budget says the Canada Infrastructure Bank will "seek" to invest $1 billion in broadband projects over the next decade, and leverage "at least" another $2 billion from private sector capital. FCM president Vicki May Hamm said the overall broadband funding numbers and timelines are on-target for what her organization had estimated would be required. "We know this can't be done overnight. This is a long term investment and this is what we've been asking for," she said -- adding that, like other stakeholder groups, they're still reviewing the budget figures and looking for more details. Laura Tribe, executive director at OpenMedia, said setting firm deadlines for the speed targets "sends a really strong signal" to underserved areas that improving rural internet connectivity is a priority and matters to everyone. But she said the document is missing some details and guarantees, which raises a number of questions around what it would mean if the targets were missed, whether the infrastructure will all be built on future-proof technologies, and how the private sector financing will work under the new programming. Matt Stein, Canadian Network Operators Consortium chair and the CEO of Distributel Communications Ltd., said the new rural broadband funding is "pretty exciting" and a "very important" step to "address a problem that hasn't been adequately addressed before." But he said he's somewhat concerned it's using the CRTC's 2016 50/10 Mbps standard as a hard speed target, which may not be a comparably good speed by 2030. "I think the government really needs to come back and look at that every few years to make sure that's an appropriate speed," he said. Marie-Hélène Labrie, senior vice-president of public affairs and communications at Cogeco Communications Inc., said the company is happy to see the increased funding and is awaiting more details on the new broadband programming. Cogeco was one of a number of groups that pushed for boosting rural broadband funding during pre-budget consultations. The new Universal Broadband Fund also sets aside $11.5 million over five years to Statistics Canada so it can test how well the government is doing connecting Canadians -- money which would pay for two new surveys to measure household internet access and collect other internet use stats. The government didn't bring in new measures Tuesday related to spectrum, over-the-top players or foreign digital companies, or anything else that might be sensitive in what's becoming a more tumultuous pre-campaign period for the Liberals, who are suffering from a raging scandal that's claimed the jobs of two cabinet ministers, the clerk of the privy council and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's principal secretary -- not to mention the ongoing Mark Norman trial. Broadband funding wasn't the only new telecom or digital measure in the election-year budget. The budget allows ISED to start planning regulatory resources so it's ready for a new equipment environment under 5G wireless technology. In a line-item called "preparing for a new generation of wireless technology," the department is being allocated $117 million over five years to deal with new regulatory burdens. That funding is expected to go to more staff and resources to monitor radio interference, a problem that could proliferate under the new technology. "This will support equipment modernization and the development of innovative tools and systems to enhance ongoing efforts to minimize network interference and verify compliance with health and safety standards, including in the context of the new generation of wireless networks," the budget reads. The Liberals have also set out $144.9 million over five years in funds for protecting critical infrastructure to "help protect Canada's critical cyber systems including in the finance, telecommunications, energy and transport sectors," spread across a range of departments, with notably $92 million set aside for Communications Security Establishment (CSE) resources. Ottawa is also planning new legislative changes to introduce a new "critical cyber systems framework," although it offered no details on what that means or whether it will be separate from the budget bill. It set out $80 million over four years, starting in 2020-21, to set up three or more "cyber security networks" affiliated with post-secondary institutions to "expand research, development and commercialization partnerships between academia and the private sector" and grow the cyber security talent pool in Canada. CSE is also getting an extra $4.2 million over three years for cyber security advice and guidance to political parties and elections officials, which lands amid concerns Canadian democratic institutions are "increasingly" falling "under threat from foreign influence and disinformation," according to the budget. Another $2.1 million is going to Global Affairs to contribute to the G7's "rapid response mechanism" agreed to at the June 2018 Charlevoix conference for information sharing with Canada's allies about digital threats to democracies. Additionally, $19.4 million is being put toward an anti-fake news project called the Digital Democracy Project for producing research and policy options to fight online disinformation. The government also set up a $67.3 million fund to be split among several departments including the RCMP, Global Affairs, Public Safety and ISED, to fight "economic-based security threats" such as Canadian IP and technology theft, and against R&D "being used as 'back-door' channels to obtain sensitive Canadian technologies." That funding spans five years, and covers activities like stakeholder outreach and engagement, awareness raising and enhancing existing "tools" to investigate and fight against those threats. On the cultural side, the budget includes a $20 million cash injection over two years, starting immediately, to the Canadian Music Fund to bolster "support for the production, promotion and distribution of Canadian music" and "address some of the challenges faced by Canadian musicians in the digital era." — With reporting by Kyle Duggan at kduggan@thewirereport.ca, and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

All Canadian households will have 50/10 speeds by 2030: Morneau

News | 03/19/2019 4:03 pm EDT

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