32% of Indigenous households at below 5 Mbps: gov’t projections

The federal government expected contributions from its broadband programs, including Connecting Canadians and Connect to Innovate (CTI), to slash by half the number of Indigenous households that don’t have access to at least 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload by this year, according to a confidential August 2018 document. The Innovation Canada “two pager” also paints a less rosy picture for other connectivity levels this year: notably, that 71 per cent of Indigenous households will not have access to a connection that meets the CRTC’s basic service standard of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload. The state of broadband coverage for remote and Indigenous communities document, released to The Wire Report under Access to Information law, projected that 64 per cent of Indigenous households did not have access to the old basic service standard of 5 Mbps before Connecting Canadians launched in 2014. By end of March 2019, that number would drop to 32 per cent, the document predicted. But that number is still “an order of magnitude higher” than the 3.4 per cent of all Canadian households that will remain underserved at the completion of the program, it adds. The figures include both public and private investments in those areas. When reached for comment about whether those projections have been updated, ISED deferred to the new ministry of rural economic development, established earlier this year. Press secretary for the rural development minister Emilie Simard said in an email that a “full updated projection of the Connecting Canadians program is planned for the end of summer, 2019. “The update will include minor corrections to demographic information (i.e. the placement and Indigenous designation of households as derived from the census) as well as updated private sector expansion and near final impacts for Connecting Canadians Program (CCP) projects.” The 2014 budget allocated $290 million in grants and contributions to provide at least 280,000 households in rural and remote regions with high-speed internet access, at target download speeds of 5 Mbps in rural and remote areas, and 3 to 5 Mbps in the northern part of the country. According to the government’s website, the Connecting Canadian program is expected to exceed its target to approximately 300,000 by 2019. In 2011, the CRTC set those base speeds as national targets by 2015. In late 2016, it set a new basic service standard of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload. Connecting Canadians, whose initial conclusion was slated for March 31, 2019, was extended by exactly a year to complete projects with “unforeseen delays encountered by the recipients,” Simard said. Subsequent funding packages for those harder-to-reach areas include the $500-million, five-year CTI program and the CRTC’s $750-million Broadband Fund, applications to which are currently being accepted. The 71 per cent of Indigenous households that still don’t have access to 50/10 speeds is “5 times higher than the 13% of all Canadian households that do not have access to a 50/10 Mbps connection,” the document reads. According to an annex breaking down projected Indigenous household connectivity at the end of the Connecting Canadians program, the document said 100 per cent of the Canadian territories were expected to be underserved with 50/10 speeds. That projection was accurate, with CRTC chairman Ian Scott recently citing the statistic as the reason CRTC’s broadband fund will initially focus on the North and satellite-dependent communities. The document predicted that Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador would see 99.9, 99.4, 95.5 and 90.1 per cent of Indigenous households, respectively, underserved with 50/10. Indigenous households in Ontario and Prince Edward Island would be at 82.2 per cent and 70.3 per cent underserved with those speeds, while Quebec, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, and New Brunswick have better figures at 54.7, 53.1, 36.1 and 11.7 per cent, respectively. The 2019 federal budget set a goal of covering 90 per cent of Canadian homes and businesses with 50/10 speeds by 2021, 95 per cent by 2026, and 100 per cent by 2030. It pledged an $85-million top-up to the CTI program and an additional $1.7 billion in a Universal Broadband Fund. In the prairie provinces, while the Connecting Canadians program has had a “significant positive impact” on Indigenous household connectivity in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Manitoba has the largest connectivity gap among those provinces, the document outlined. “In fact, Northern Manitoba has the worst connectivity in all of Canada,” it said. Across the country, just over half of the 897 Indigenous communities, or 460, do not have a high-speed backbone connection and were eligible for CTI funding, the document says. Of those, 191 will benefit from the CTI funding. The Wire Report reported last month that the government had yet to notify 60 per cent of CTI applicants, whose applications were due two years ago. In an interview with this publication, Jordan said her ministry is expected to release its national broadband strategy before the federal election this October. — With reporting by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

32% of Indigenous households at below 5 Mbps: gov’t projections

News | 06/17/2019 6:35 pm EDT

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