EORN finds Frontenac County to be a soft touch

Jeff Green | May 23, 2018

Frontenac County is not generally an easy organisation to extract funds from. With the notable exception of its long-term commitment to supporting the University Hospitals Kingston Foundation, council is reluctant to spend money on anything other than funding its own services.

But when EORN comes calling, Frontenac County is ready and willing to pay.

And the reason is simple. EORN (The Eastern Ontario Regional Network) was created by the Eastern Ontario Warden’s Caucus in order to put together massive electronic infrastructure projects. Their goal is to bring high quality internet and cell phone service to every corner of Eastern Ontario, and if there is one thing that residents of Frontenac County have made clear to their elected representatives, it is the desire for better cell and Internet coverage.

The first time EORN came calling, the council of the day was a bit nervous about the amount of money they were being asked to contribute, over $500,000, but that first project was a success. By the end of it, 82% of Frontenac County households have Internet service with up to 10 megabit per second download speed from a fixed wireless or direct service or a dsl (digital subscriber line - ie a phone line), a major improvement over the past. The 18% who do not have one of those options can access satellite service.

The new project is devoted to improving cell phone coverage to Eastern Ontario, with the goal of cutting the number of residents without cell overage from 16% to less than 1%. The other goal of the project is to bring Eastern Ontario in line with the ambitious goal identified by Canadian Radio-television and telecommunications (CRTC) for Internet service; 50mgabit per second in download speeds and 10 megabit upload speeds.

Lisa Severson and Stephane Parisien from EORN described how EORN needs to conduct a major study to determine how to accomplish these daunting speeds within a vast rural area such as Eastern Ontario. Their first request of Frontenac County was a $40,000 contribution to the study.

The second request was for somewhere between $385,000 and $510,000 (depending on how many municipalities in Eastern Ontario participate in the project) over 4 years to improve cell coverage.

“I can say that the upper limit, the $510,000 is off the table now,” said Parisien, “because we already have had some major commitments.”

That local commitment will be matched by a provincial contribution which is already committed, an expected Federal commitment, and industry investment, leading to a project in excess of $200 million in scope.

This time around, there was no hesitation among members of Frontenac County Council.

$40,000 was committed, from reserve funds, towards the study. Although this council will be gone before the next budget is prepared, they directed staff to plan for the payment of up to $500,000 over 3 or 4 years under the reasonable expectation that the next council will follow follow through with the payment.

The only concern that council raised was over something that has been pulled from the project, work on developing a communication network for first responders, especially fire services. The Frontenac municipalities need to update their old communications systems and a regional solution would save a lot of money for local ratepayers.

“The province has asked us to wait until they are ready to work on this,” said Parisien, “we are a bit ahead of the curve, but once they are ready we will take it up again.”