In an example of sharing and co-operation that Sesame Street characters would be proud of, two local groups vying to bring broadband to Rainy River District joined forces last Friday and submitted a joint proposal to a federal program for infrastructure dollars.
The Rainy River Future Development Corp. and Pwi-Di-Goo-Zing Ne-Yaa-Zhing Advisory Services pulled together their proposals to create one big submission for BRAND funding.
The Broadband for Rural and Northern Development program is a federal initiative aimed at bringing broadband to rural and northern areas.
“Rainy River Future Development Corp. has come in with us to submit one big proposal,” said Jim Leonard of Pwi-Di-Goo-Zing.
“It was huge,” he added, referring to the joint proposal. “It was like a three-inch binder that went in [to BRAND].”
Pwi-Di-Goo-Zing—representing seven area First Nations communities—received up to $30,000 of funding in the initial stages of the program to put towards developing a business plan.
Part of that plan was to request RFPs from companies interested in providing the service so a cost assessment could be made.
RRFDC also had applied for business plan development dollars but was turned down. It decided to go ahead in developing a plan without the federal cash.
Both groups invited companies to submit proposals and received about five each.
“We’re working with Bell,” Leonard said of the joint proposal.
However, Bell Canada didn’t have enough time to submit an RFP to the RRFDC—which represents municipalities across the district.
“There was no Bell RFP,” said Bernie Blake, general manager of operations for Bell in Northwestern Ontario. “We needed a couple of days’ extension and we weren’t granted that extension.”
He said he understood the refusal of an extension because he knew that it wouldn’t have been fair to the other groups which had worked just as hard to submit an RFP on time.
Blake also confirmed last week that Bell had submitted “various applications throughout all of Northern Ontario” including this area, although he wouldn’t confirm it was Pwi-Di-Goo-Zing.
Pwi-Di-Goo-Zing did that themselves yesterday.
Bell couldn’t be reached by press time to discuss the details of its proposal and what the costs might be, but Blake did stress that if one were to bring broadband to Rainy River District, it might not cost as much as others have suggested.
Part of that has to do with the fact that Bell, according to Blake, has advanced telecommunications throughout most of the district already.
“That’s how you and I are talking,” he said during a phone interview.
He noted there are two fibre optic rings in Northwestern Ontario—one along the Trans-Canada Highway and the other along Highway 11/71—which carry Bell’s national traffic.
“We have a few locations in the Rainy River and Stratton area that aren’t on a fibre ring,” he said, adding those were some of the only places in the district.
“I don’t want our customers to think we don’t have state-of-the-art communications in your area,” Blake remarked, taking issue with comments in an article in the May 28 edition of the Times.
In that article, it was suggested by Jerry Korman, an engineering consultant for the RRFDC, that he had seen no evidence of a fibre ring in the area.
Korman also suggested that existing hardware Bell removed from the district several years ago could have done the job and brought broadband access here much earlier.
Blake countered by saying though it would have been possible to use the older, smaller DMS-10 hardware, Bell didn’t want to put money into a smaller system when it could be spent on providing remote service with a DMS-100 switch based in Thunder Bay.
“We can remote it [broadband access] off my existing switch to the west end of the district,” he said.
“It doesn’t cost that much,” he stressed, adding the cost would be in the thousands rather than the hundreds of millions suggested by others.
“Bell was on the low end,” Leonard said of their RFP compared to others Pwi-Di-Goo-Zing received. “It was the lowest. There was a huge, huge range in costs.”
By joining forces, the RRFDC can take advantage of Bell’s proposal to Pwi-Di-Goo-Zing, but the real benefit is in the co-operation.
“We called them in because we didn’t want to send in two proposals,” noted Leonard. “We thought our chances were better together.”
He added he hoped the added co-operation would make their bid more favourable.
“We got some support from the municipalities,” Leonard said. “We’re happy to be working with the other municipalities. It’s a good exercise.”
According to Leonard, it’s now merely a waiting game. A decision on who will receive infrastructure funding is expected next September. Leonard said they must cross their fingers and wait patiently.
And if the proposal is accepted as is, he predicted it will take a year to complete the infrastructure and bring broadband to the district—“from Mine Centre to Rainy River.”
“It’s not going to happen overnight, that’s for sure,” he concluded.
From there, a service provider would be chosen to provide high-speed Internet access, though Leonard said it wouldn’t automatically be Bell.
“We’ll own the system,” he said. “The infrastructure will be there. Then we’ll look at who will provide the service.”
(Fort Frances Times)
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
