For some reason, the release of yet another report highlighting the deepening disconnect between urban and rural Canada over internet connectivity made me think of telephones.
Growing up in rural Manitoba, where our telephone “party line” was shared by six large families, connectivity was often a topic of discussion. Sometimes the line was in use when you wanted it. Sometimes, there was a little too much connectivity because the neighbour kids liked to listen in when the boyfriend called.
The late Gilbert Alexander Muir, formerly the chief engineer for the government-owned Manitoba Telephone System, wrote a whimsical history for the Manitoba Historical Society back in the 1960s of how this province became a North American leader in telecom services. Despite the utilitarian title, “A History of the Telephone in Manitoba,” Muir wrote a fun story well worth the read.
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“In our age of jet transportation, space communications, computer technology and data transmission, the remembrances of the age in which the telephone took hold seems strange — like the tin-plated pictures in the family albums of yesteryear showing frock-coated grandfather, arms akimbo staring grimly at the camera,” he wrote.
Here’s the condensed version. Alexander Graham Bell discovered the telephone in 1876. The first telephones came to Winnipeg two years later. Bell’s patent expired in 1893. The resulting competition that saw linemen from competing companies cutting each other’s lines or sawing off their poles prompted the Manitoba government to take over responsibility for telecom services in 1908.
By the Roaring Twenties, almost every corner of the province was linked to the rest of Canada, the United States and several overseas points. Accomplishing all of that spanned five decades.
By comparison, the internet was first discovered in 1983, and nearly 40 years later, we are nowhere near to having rural Canadians connected beyond the most rudimentary levels — if at all.
The Council of Canadian Academies report “Waiting to Connect: The Expert Panel on High-Throughput Networks for Rural and Remote Communities in Canada” is a not-so-fun read, but nonetheless worthwhile as it zeros in on the urgency for a better strategy.
“Compared to urban centres, broadband connectivity in rural and remote regions has generally been characterized by slower transmission speeds, less availability, and higher costs,” it says.
Nationwide, more than half of rural households lacked access to services meeting the federal target, compared to just 1.4 per cent of urban households. In 2019, 86 per cent rural of Manitoba households lacked access to the federal government target of 50/10 (Mbps download/upload speeds) with unlimited monthly data transfer. Saskatchewan is doing only modestly better. The only places in Canada faring worse are Nunavut and Northwest Territories.
Plus, rural Canada is falling further behind. Even if the current strategy, which relies heavily on providing incentives to the private sector, meets the target of getting everyone in Canada up to those speeds, woefully slow by even 2021 standards, by 2030, urban Canada has already progressed far beyond. And the pace of change is accelerating.
“The reliance on market-based mechanisms to fund broadband connectivity programs in rural and remote communities has consistently failed to deliver levels of service comparable to those available in urban Canada,” the report says.
The authors note that the pandemic has sharpened focus on the impact of these connectivity gaps. People living in underserved communities were less able to function virtually, students were shut out of education, and patients have been unable to access health care.
It is not just about delivering access. Adoption rates are lower in rural Canada as well.
Incomes tend to be lower, which makes the higher cost of service less affordable. Digital literacy is lower and there is a lack of IT support when things go wrong. Indigenous communities are particularly hard hit by these factors, which places them at a disproportionate disadvantage.
In a nutshell, the report says improving access and adoption is not only fundamental to the future of rural Canada, it’s an important path towards our reconciliation of historic wrongs.
The story of connecting rural Canada via broadband has yet to be finished, but it’s becoming clearer that more of the same is not our path to a happy ending.
