Fort Frances is the latest in a string of communities in Rainy River District to receive an upgrade from Bell Canada–an upgrade that offers customers a number of new services but still won’t provide residents here with high-speed Internet access.
“In the early morning hours on March 23, our team of highly-skilled technicians successfully completed the switch-over,” said Caren Naismith, Bell Canada’s regional director of Community Affairs and Customer Services for Northwestern Ontario.
Following the switch-over, new services were offered to customers in town as of Monday.
Among the services now available are Centrex Data (which is used to send and receive data and video-conference transmissions), Centrex Voice, Voice Mail-Call Answer, and the ISDN MicroLink and Megalink.
But the upgrade does not mean faster Internet speeds are available immediately. Instead, residents and businesses will have to settle for existing speeds until an Internet Service Provider takes on the expensive upgrade locally.
“The confusion is everybody thinks 56K and ISDN services are already in place but they’re actually just available now from Bell,” noted Dave Ashworth of Jam 21.Net here.
Until a provider makes that investment, choosing to upgrade and provide the 56K analog connection or the link to the digital network to Fort Frances residents and businesses, Internet access will remain the same.
Still, both Jam 21.Net and Voyageur Net out of Kenora are planning to go ahead with the upgrades soon.
“I’m working on the project as we speak,” noted Rob Lindstrom from Voyageur Net.
“Currently there is sufficient bandwidth but you don’t have the hardware,” added Lindstrom, who noted Bell has held a monopoly over the high-speed DSL, making it almost impossible to profitably resell the service in Ontario.
“You need to have cable or DSL modems for high-speed,” he remarked.
But with no sign of DSL access from Bell, and Videon having recently been sold to Shaw Cable, Lindstrom suggested the town speed up the path to high-speed Internet by investing itself.
“I think the city should go into the cable market, the city should go find a partner to move it into a high-speed Internet business,” Lindstrom suggested.
For now, Mayor Glenn Witherspoon said the town will work on using Bell’s upgrade to promote economic development
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
