CRTC hits ‘key milestone’ on rural internet service

Nearly two years after it declared high-speed internet a basic service and announced plans to transition funding to broadband from telephone lines, Canada’s telecom regulator has revealed the framework of its $750-million fund to bring rural and remote internet up to speed.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will prioritize projects with faster speeds and lower prices in geographic areas where service is furthest from hitting its universal objective of 50 Mbps download speeds and 10 Mbps upload speeds, according to the decision released Thursday. The money comes from the CRTC phasing out its local phone subsidy in favour of broadband spending, a decision it made in 2016 to reflect a digital era where internet access provides better connection than a land line. CRTC chairman Ian Scott called the decision a “key milestone” to reach its goal of getting those target speeds to 90 per cent of Canadian households by the end of 2021. More than two million households (16 per cent) couldn’t access these speeds at the end of 2016, according to CRTC data. Yet the CRTC will cut the speed targets in half to 25 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload for the initial round of funding. Demanding the universal target right away would have eliminated some of the hardest to serve areas from the fund due to high costs of expansion, CRTC spokeswoman Patricia Valladao said. “In some of the underserved areas, getting that universal objective will really have to be incremental.” Areas with the worst internet connections will be most likely to land funding. The CRTC will only look at fixed and mobile projects in areas where no household has access to the universal service objective. Partially served areas will not be eligible. OpenMedia, a consumer advocacy group, called the decision a “stunning step backwards” that “demonstrates a serious lack of ambition” by not meeting the CRTC’s definition of basic service. “Internet users and business owners are going to be furious when they realize the CRTC lowered their own speed targets for funding in half,” executive director Laura Tribe said in a statement.