Ultra-fast Internet puts global spotlight on Olds

Olds — population 8,500 — is a typical Prairie community with deep agricultural roots. Only last weekend, it hosted the World Plowing Championships.

But the rural Alberta town has an unexpected claim to fame: Residents here enjoy the fastest Internet service in the country — if not North America — with speeds unrivalled in most major cities.

Homes and businesses in Olds can access a full gigabit (or 1,000 megabits) per-second of bandwidth for as little as $57 a month. While other rural communities in Canada are saddled with sluggish technology, people in this town are able to watch multiple high-definition programs simultaneously.

The only service close to it in North America is Google Fiber, a pilot initiative in Kansas City that has sparked widespread attention south of the border.

The tiny Alberta town is also attracting buzz, according to a Montreal-based telecom analyst.

“Olds is right up there in the forefront of wired communities in the world,” said Iain Grant, managing director of the Seaboard Group.

“It means there are a lot more people talking about the town today than there were yesterday.”

The ultra-fast web project didn’t happen overnight. A decade ago, concerned Olds residents and politicians formed a non-profit organization tasked with improving the town’s economic prospects.

Locals wanted to stem the tide of young people abandoning the town for nearby Red Deer and Calgary.

“The community — like other small, rural places — struggled to not become obsolete,” said Lance Douglas, CEO of locally-owned Internet service provider O-Net.

“How do you remain relevant? How do you convince local talent from the college to stick around? And how do you bring new talent and jobs to town?”

The answer was to build out a fibre network using the backbone of the Alberta SuperNet to connect every single business and home with affordable and ultra-fast Internet service.

By way of comparison, Calgarybased Shaw offers all of its customers the option to pay for download speeds of 100 mbps (megabits per second), or about one tenth the speed of the O-Net service.

Town officials hope the network will help it attract technology companies, energy firms and other big bandwidth users.

It’s estimated the project will cost between $13 million and $15 million once complete. It was financed using a loan backed by the town and a line of credit from a local bank.

“This is a well-planned-out business opportunity where the entire town benefits,” said Douglas.

“Our vision is to be on the leading edge of technology, but in a balanced fashion. We have to do what’s right by the community and balance that with generating the appropriate profits to cover off the operations and the future advancement of Olds.”

The town’s one-gigabit offering is certain to spark bandwidth envy among a small population of power users in Calgary, Edmonton and across the country, agrees Grant.

But it’s still a niche market. The majority of urbanites aren’t willing to pay for Internet speeds much beyond 30 mbps, which is sufficient for browsing, watching videos and downloading music, he said.

“But from Olds’ point of view, this has put them on the map. It’s a fabulous marketing move: the town is the first in Canada, among the first in North America and even the world,” Grant said.