All dialed up

The last couple of Editor's Viewpoints discussed the need for rural parts of this country to gain greater access to high-speed Internet services. And while those arguments focused on the feds, we should also keep in mind that this is also a provincial issue.

Last week, the province's Opposition Leader queried the government on its plans to bring high-speed Internet to rural areas of the province.

As reported in the Telegram, Kelvin Parsons asked Innovation Minister Shawn Skinner in the House of Assembly how the government plans to provide "hundreds of schools, government buildings, health facilities, public libraries and municipal buildings" with high-speed Internet access.

Minister Skinner's reply was that the Government Broadband Initiative was being retooled, noting the project's original call for proposals was cancelled in February due to tenders being far higher than anticipated.

"The broadband initiative is alive and well," said the minister. "We are still working on it, and we will be coming out very shortly with some information to explain how we are proceeding forward."

So bringing high-speed Internet is more expensive than what the government thought. No big surprise, because as the Georgian has already said, if it was cheap to do, we'd all be skimming around the Internet at lightning speed by now.

However, as you may have already noted, the debate in the House of Assembly wasn't around residential high-speed access per se, rather it dealt with better connections for government sites.

The minister said in the House that by expanding the government network, it would provide some of the technology needed in rural areas for private carriers to tap into, so these carriers would be able to provide services for residents.

In other words, it looks like those in rural Newfoundland and Labrador will have to wait for the provincial government to come up with a plan to get their networks in place, implement that initiative, and then hang on for a private provider to come in before giving the dial-up modem a final farewell.

The Georgian provided emails for other politicians, and our local MHAs' contact information is available in this paper's business directory. Look them up and let them know what you think about the seemingly never-ending wait for high-speed Internet connections. As it stands right now, high-speed Internet for all rural residents of this province is still but a distant digital dream.

Christopher Vaughan