‘They shouldn’t be penalized’: Indigenous communities face affordability challenges as more rural areas get broadband access

If you want to video-chat a family member who lives across the country, check out what your friends are up to on social media, or watch your favourite Netflix show, you need only take out your phone. That is, at least, the case for most Canadians. But for many of the country’s most remote and northern Indigenous communities, reliable internet access is an out-of-reach amenity. Broadband connection may be painstakingly slow, or lacking altogether. The federal government is pushing towards its goal of connecting 100 per cent of Canadian households to high-speed internet by 2030, but Indigenous communities still face hurdles to secure that connection. But even if all Indigenous communities were to get access to high-speed internet, would that automatically create digital equity across the country? Not necessarily, according to multiple experts who spoke to The Wire Report. Communities face sky-high fees, fewer service options For David Cote, general manager of the Western James Bay Telecom Network, providing the fly-in Northern Ontario communities of Attawapiskat, Kashechewan, and Fort Albany with high-speed internet costs two and a half times more than what a customer would pay in non-isolated communities. The cost of flying in all the equipment, Cote said, considerably increases the price of building out infrastructure. “You might spend $2,000 on a small reel of cable that you need, but now you’re going to pay that much in order to freight it up on the aircraft to get it there,” he told The Wire Report. Servicing these regions means sourcing bandwidth from “the outside world,” which Cote said is a huge expense. The CRTC is currently consulting on a retail internet subsidy for residents of the far north. Though the subsidy would not include the James Bay region, Cote hopes the CRTC will introduce a similar policy for other remote Indigenous communities to help him lower his prices. “When you’re dealing with an area already considered low-income, for them to carve out that money to put towards internet is a big thing,” he said. Questions of digital equity also arise about which services are made available in remote communities. Many areas in the far north, including Inuit communities, rely on Space Exploration Technologies Corp.’s (SpaceX) low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation, Starlink. As first reported by The Wire Report, some industry stakeholders believe after the conclusion of the Universal Broadband Fund, the government will rely on LEO satellites to fill the remaining gaps in connectivity. While any form of connection can be a lifeline for isolated Indigenous communities, LEO satellites are largely considered to provide slower speeds, higher latency, and cost more which makes them—in many cases—an inferior solution to their fibre optic counterpart. Indigenous Canadians are disproportionately lower income, meaning the cost of purchasing the Starlink unit, plus the high monthly fees can make the service inaccessible, said Rob McMahon, associate professor at the University of Alberta. “We could call it a capital expense for individual households,” he told The Wire Report. McMahon added that requiring Indigenous communities to rely solely on LEO satellites locks in a new type of monopoly. Buying a Starlink dish only gives that customer access to the SpaceX network, whereas laying fibre opens the door for multiple options and increased competition, he said. According to a study conducted by the University of Victoria, bonding a few LEO dishes together in a community, paired with a local distribution network can reduce cost and increase reliability, professor Jianping Pan told The Wire Report in an email. Earlier this year, the federal government announced it was backing a project in Nunavut that would combine Telesat Corp.’s LEO constellation with fibre infrastructure built by Northwestel, owned by BCE Inc. The initiative is expected to bring high-speed internet to every household in the territory by 2029. Asennaienton Frank Horn, founder of Indigi Solutions and director of the Indigenous Connectivity Institute, said LEO satellites have their place for individual customers, but they should not be the backbone of a community connection. ”If fibre’s not available, it’s not coming anytime soon, the only option that someone has is LEO. That can meet their needs and the cost per month is, I guess, justifiable,” he said. ”LEO is not the only solution, but it should be part of the solution.” Horn said the goal is to create an ecosystem of redundancy. “If you can have more than just one option available, it creates redundancy so that you’re not relying on one pathway to feed the community,” he said. “But it can also create a competitive marketplace. ... And therefore it’s better for the end consumer.” Indigenous residents limited by unfavourable geography It’s not just the remoteness of certain Indigenous communities that make laying fibre more difficult. The ease of laying fibre also depends on physical geography. For example, many northern and remote Indigenous communities are located on the Canadian Shield, which must be taken into consideration when planning a network build, according to Horn. The Canadian Shield is an exposed portion of continental crust that covers about half of Canada’s land mass. It stretches across Labrador, Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba, as well as northern Saskatchewan and a small portion of northeast Alberta. It also reaches up into Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. When it comes to blasting, specialized equipment, and decreased population density, Horn said the amount of payback doesn’t justify the build out for most telecom providers. Though others, like McMahon, thought the upfront cost of building a fibre network may be greater, but the sustainability and reliability of the network makes the investment worthwhile. Meanwhile, Andrew Victor, co-chair of the National Indigenous Connectivity Initiative, said Indigenous communities aren’t left behind because of geography, but because of a systemic market failure. “Big Telco treats our communities through a low-ROI (Return on Investment) lens, viewing our people as passive ‘customers’ rather than sovereign landlords,” he said by email to The Wire Report. Cote said major telecom providers believe Indigenous people living in remote communities who want high-speed internet should move to the city, though he suggested this argument no longer holds up. “I’ve been on the other side of the table where I used to say, ‘well, they could move,’” said Cote, who used to work for BCE Inc.’s Bell Aliant. “Well, in some cases, they can’t. Or they don’t want to because this is their homeland.” “This is where they’re from and this is where they want to live. They shouldn’t be penalized for that.” The CRTC classifies high-speed internet as an essential service for everyone. Lies, damned lies, and connectivity statistics? According to one idiom, numbers don’t lie. But when it comes to the government’s metric for reaching its 2030 broadband goal, the numbers could deceive. Asked if it is reasonable to expect 100 per cent of Indigenous households to be connected to high-speed internet by 2030, McMahon said it depends on framing. While the government could make the service technically available to every household, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s accessible to every household. First, he said, even if the service gets all the way to their doorstep, the exorbitant cost of connectivity could leave internet services just out of reach for many low-income families. McMahon said access to high-speed internet means access to essential public services like healthcare, education, and employment. ”In many of these communities a few hundred households, they don’t have a lot of what we call brick and mortar, face-to-face services,” he said. “You just don’t have the population levels to sustain what we would get in an urban centre.” For Victor, the NICI wants to see Indigenous people gain sovereignty over their networks and data and not to be digitally dependent on a third party. “ metric for success for the federal 2030 goal is not how many Indigenous households become customers of corporate telecom giants,” he wrote. “Our metric is ownership and stewardship.” “True digital decolonization means our Nations own the infrastructure, govern the spectrum, protect our own data sovereignty, and build an economic engine for the next seven generations.” mcollins@thewirereport.ca

‘They shouldn’t be penalized’: Indigenous communities face affordability challenges as more rural areas get broadband access

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By Maria Collins
|June 8, 2026

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‘They shouldn’t be penalized’: Indigenous communities face affordability challenges as more rural areas get broadband access

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