Council apprised of cell gap project initiative, hoping for gig project success

Jeff Green | Jun 30, 2021

Members of Frontenac County Council were joined by local council members, from the Frontenac townships, at a virtual meeting last Wednesday (June 23) to hear a report from project managers from Rogers Communication.

Rogers was the winning bidder in a contract that was put out by EORN (the Eastern Ontario Regional Network).

EORN is a corporation that was set up by the Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus to foster the development of electronic infrastructure in the region.

The Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus is made up of heads of council from 13 rural municipalities in Eastern Ontario, from Stormont Dundas and Glengarry, to the east, to Northumberland County, to the west.

It was set up in 2004 in response to a lack of provincial funding for roads and bridges and over the years it has turned its attention to other issues as well.

Improvements in cell-phone and internet coverage in rural and remote regions of Eastern Ontario has been identified as a priority, for community and economic development, for well over 10 years.

In response, EORN has developed technical expertise, and a formula for seeking funding, for large infrastructure projects. Seed funding from member municipalities is used as an incentive for matching federal and provincial grants, all aimed at enticing investments from private sector companies, like Rogers, to invest in rural and remote regions where there is not enough business available to make a case for them to invest otherwise.

The cell gap project will result in a $150 million investment, by Rogers, into upgrades to 300 existing cell towers in the region in addition to the construction of 300 new towers. By the terms of the contract, the infrastructure that is constructed must be made available to other providers, so service improvements will not be limited to Rogers customers.

Rogers reps told Council that the upgrades to the existing towers are underway, and Rogers is now looking for locations for the new towers.

They did not say how many new towers are expected to be built in Frontenac County. Rogers currently operates 6 towers in the South/Central Frontenac region, 4 on Hwy 7 in Frontenac County, and one in Cloyne. Aside from the Cloyne tower, there are no other towers in North Frontenac.

The new tower phase of the project is now underway. Rogers expects to have 75 new towers in place by the summer of 2023, and all 300 by the summer of 2025.

The goal of the project is to provide sufficient cell service for calling and sufficient internet connectivity for live streaming, and social media applications, to 95% of households in Eastern Ontario, and that includes seasonal and waterfront locations.

The permanent population of the region is about 1.5 million.

Aside from the cell gap project update, members of council discussed a project that is now being promoted by EORN, the gig project.

Jim Pine, the Chief Executive Officer of EORN, said that when EORN was looking at a new internet project, it decided to seek a “solution for the next 20 years or so, which is a gigabit of information per second, which we realise is well above the current CRTC standard”.

The current standard is 50 megabits of download speed and 10 megabits of upload speed.

The gig standard is thus 2 times faster. In order to deliver these speeds, a fibre cable to each customer is necessary. As with the cell gap project, the gig project aims to deliver this level of service to 95% of households in the region.

EORN submitted the project last year, but with renewed commitments from both levels of government to internet infrastructure, they resubmitted last spring.

The price tag of the project is high, $1.2- $1.6 billion, but the necessary subsidy from the federal and provincial governments to entice the private sector is a more reasonable $200 million each, which is 4-5% of the money that each has set aside for spending on Internet.

“We think that is a reasonable request for a region of this size and we hope they will support us,” said Pine.

Pine said that EORN estimates that this level of Internet service, which would be a massive increase over the 10 – 20 megabit, often unreliable download speeds that are common in most of Frontenac County, would have major economic impacts. It would also provide savings to upper levels of government, by making services cheaper to deliver.

“We estimate that the province could see $107 million in healthcare savings alone,” he said.

“We need an answer soon, one way or another,” Pine concluded.

Frontenac Islands Mayor, Denis Doyle, said that when he was with a group of mayors lobbying provincial politicians, “one of our MPP's said that we should all sign up with Elon Musk. What do you say to that kind of argument.”

“Satellite technology will be a part of all solutions I think,” said Pine in response. “If you put a piece of fibre into someone's house, they are going to get the service reliability and the amount of service they need for a long time. It's the gold standard and why shouldn't our people have that. There will be some homes that we can't get to, it's not a panacea for everything. The world is changing, and we know that fibre is the backbone of all of the technologies that are coming on stream.”