As I’ve mentioned, my own personal rural internet problem has been solved, for now, since a new private company put up more towers in our area. But I know there are many farmers who still don’t have access to an internet plan fast enough to serve a modern business in 2018. (The full story: my internet speed problem has been solved, and I’m thrilled. But it is irritating knowing that my monthly bill of $199.99+tax is more than double the $79.95 Regina residents pay SaskTel for a similar service, but that’s a complaint for another day.)

So although my problem is solved, for now, I’m happy to hear the federal government is looking for ways to help farmers who aren’t as lucky as me, and also to keep our options current, so I can keep up when city residents upgrade to even faster internet technology.

I was looking forward to June 8.

Goodale’s press release began with an important point: “Fast internet is more than just a convenience; communities, businesses and institutions need it to offer new services and create new opportunities.” That’s for sure.

This came along with $12 million for the federal “Connect to Innovate” program (total expected value: $500 million), to: “bring access to high-speed or faster internet to 30 rural communities and up to 163 institutions in Saskatchewan.” The money will be used to build the “digital backbone of high-speed internet networks.”

When I saw the word “backbone,” I got a little nervous. It’s going to be a long time before a “backbone” gets all the way to our farmyard.

Sure enough. The money being invested in Saskatchewan will go to SaskTel and FlexNetworks to provide specific communities and institutions with high-speed internet.

I don’t understand exactly how this works, so I called someone in the industry with expertise in this area. What I wanted to know is, would this expanded backbone help small, private companies that provide internet over towers serve more farm customers?

“No.”

“The fund was marketed to end users as a huge improvement in helping rural customers. However, with many government projects, sadly this was not the case,” said my contact, who would rather not be named.

He explained that the fibre optic backbone the federal government is helping to fund is only accessible to SaskTel and FlexNetworks. When a company planning to build a tower to serve someone like me wants to access this backbone to send out a connection to nearby farms, SaskTel or FlexNetworks charges them up to four times the rates charged in larger centres. That makes this option a non-starter, cost wise, for someone thinking of using this government-funded backbone to start a new service to get the internet those last few miles down our gravel roads.

About the ongoing quest for farm internet access, my contact said: “The media campaign run by the federal government promoting this has been great. It has given everyone a false sense of hope that help is on its way. The reality is that small, private corporations are trying to help, however, the constant fight with our own tax dollars is a tough uphill battle.”

Once again, I’ll remind you that Elon Musk is sending up satellites to bring high-speed options to rural areas. And that AT&T is running a pilot project using power lines to deliver internet to rural customers. I’m optimistic that, in the future, someone will be offering me what I need to keep up with the rest of the world. It’s just a shame that those 500 million tax dollars in the federal fund likely aren’t going to help.

Saskatchewan’s provincial plant disease specialist, Barb Ziesman, spoke about managing disease at the SaskWheat semi-annual meeting (held at the Farm Progress Show in Regina this year).

Barb talked about the importance of disease prevention to keep diseases like fusarium head blight and cereal leaf spot under control.

Her management tips were the usual suspects: crop rotation to lower disease presence; resistant varieties where possible; and seeding at a higher rate to encourage less tillering, so heads emerge at the same time and simplify spray timing.

Another tip she mentioned is making sure your harvest straw is chopped and evenly spread. This, Barb said, will allow your residue to decompose faster, lowering pathogen levels in the field.

On my drive home I looked out the window at the crops just beginning to rise over last year’s stubble, and wondered, does cutting stubble higher retain more disease pathogens?

Barb says it’s not impossible. “Standing stubble can harbour the pathogen and, if left standing, can take longer to break down than if it were chopped and spread.”

Thinking of cutting low as you head into the field? She says, “The decision, in part will have to come down to practicality. There could be an advantage in cutting the stubble shorter to encourage more decomposition; however, that needs to be balanced with the benefit of leaving taller stubble.” For example, catching snow, and limiting equipment damage.

“There are no studies that have looked at this specifically,” Barb wrote. “With that said it is unlikely that a difference of a couple of inches in stubble height will have a major impact of FHB risk on its own.”

Thanks Barb!

The post Editor’s Column: The internet and stubble height appeared first on Grainews.

Since then, another local provider has sprung up. It’s using newer technology, and it has been building towers all over southeast Saskatchewan. We signed up right away, and we couldn’t be happier. I’m downloading work files and watching Netflix like a city person with no data cap.

I won’t go so far as to say faster internet has changed our lives, but it’s certainly made a lot of things easier. I won’t pretend we’re not paying more (we are, more than twice as much), but I also won’t try to tell you it’s not worth it. (It’s worth it to us, but no sane person in Saskatoon would pay nearly this much for internet that doesn’t even come with a home phone line.)

So far, the only downside has been explaining to my cousin in west-central Saskatchewan that (so far) this company doesn’t have any towers in his area, and he’ll have to keep getting by with slow downloads.

My problem is fixed. For now. But I’m sure one day, not too long from now, this new company’s new technology will be out of date and the rest of the world will be speeding up to pass me again. I’ll be back here, whining again that my internet is too slow to keep up with the city people.

But three recent pieces of rural-internet-related news are giving me hope for the future. They might even give hope to my cousin, out on his west-central farm, still waiting for the online version of this article to download.

The federal budget

Somewhere between gender equity commitments and changes to paternity leave, the federal government’s 2018 budget included a promise to spend $100M over five years to develop “the next generation of rural broadband.”

Right in the budget documents, they wrote: “The government recognizes that access to the internet is more than just a convenience — it is an essential means by which citizens and businesses access information, offer services and create opportunities.” Finally!

The money will be used for projects for “next-generation rural broadband,” and low Earth orbit satellites. It’s not an immediate solution but it should help eventually.

If you’re using satellite internet now, the dish on the roof of your house is linked up to a big satellite that’s in orbit about 22,000 miles away. There’s a lot of distance and weather between here and there, so you might see lags.

The idea of the low Earth orbit satellites is to build a big network of smaller satellites — they’re only about 3.0 x 2.2 x 2.2 feet. The “low” part of the title means they’ll be a lot nearer to your house — closer to 700 miles than 22,000 miles. This should speed things up.

And Elon Musk

Canada’s federal government is not the first arrival at the low Earth satellite party. Elon Musk has been talking about the idea since 2015 and on February 22, his SpaceX company launched the first two small low Earth satellites. They’re already communicating with Earth. Eventually, the plan is for these two to be part of a network they’re calling Starlink, made up of 4,425 satellites

The plan is for the network to offer internet everywhere on Earth — to the most remote Saskatchewan farm or even to people on a cruise ship (so much for getting away from email on your vacation).

Over the power lines

If you think Elon Musk’s project could be interesting for rural internet development, keep reading.

AT&T is working on a plan to connect people to the internet over power lines. They’re calling it “Project AirGig.”

According to AT&T, AirGig “could one day deliver internet speeds well over one gigabyte per second via a millimetre wave (mmWave) signal guided by power lines. We hope that one day there will be no need to build new towers or bury new cables in locations close to aerial power lines. Instead, using AirGig patented technology, we would install devices to provide high-speed broadband which can be clamped on by trained electrical workers in just a few minutes.”

This is exciting. Not everyone can live close to a cable internet connection, and not everyone has a line-of-sight view of an internet tower. But, in Canada, even the most remote farm has a power line.

They’re not selling AirGig yet, but in December 2017 they launched a test project in rural Georgia.

AT&T says: “While there’s no timeline yet for commercial development, we’re encouraged and excited by what we’ve seen so far.”

I’m encouraged and excited too. Keep the news coming. Eventually, some of it is bound to reach my cousin’s farm.

The post Editor’s Column: High speed high hopes appeared first on Grainews.

And so, when I came home from our Christmas holiday and heard about the CRTC’s new announcement, I was doing cartwheels on the lawn.

But, when I crawled back in through the snowbanks in our back yard and read the fine print, I realized that the CRTC announcement may not actually be life-changing — at least not right away.

Not that it’s bad news! The CRTC has clearly stated that access to broadband Internet is a “universal service objective.” And, the CRTC acknowledged that, for many rural Canadians, Internet access is not all it could be: “While most are well-served, many Canadians, particularly those in rural and remote communities, do not have access to broadband Internet access services that are comparable to those offered to the vast majority of Canadians in terms of speed, capacity, quality and price.”

It’s always a relief when someone in authority acknowledges your problem, even if they can’t fix it.

The objectives

On December 21, the CRTC set out three new targets. I’ll quote them here for you:

• “Speeds of 50 Mbps download / 10 Mbps upload for fixed broadband services;
• An unlimited data option for fixed broadband services;
• The latest mobile wireless technology available not only to all homes and businesses, but also along major Canadian roads.”

This sounds great. And to make it even better, the CRTC is putting a $750-million fund in place to makes sure these three objectives are met. But, hold your cartwheels. It’s not at all clear that these first two goals apply to my situation and they may not apply to yours.

The first two objectives are related to “fixed broadband.” This definition is typically used to mean a wire or cable brings the Internet into your house. In the background documents, the CRTC estimates that 82 per cent of Canadians already have access to fixed broadband services with download speeds of at least 50 Mbps.

I am not in this lucky 82 per cent. The nearest cable is quite a few miles from our farm, and the costs of running a cable out here seem to be more than it would be feasible to pay.

In its documents, the CRTC says it expects fixed broadband Internet “to be available in 90 per cent of Canadian premises by the end of 2021, and in the remaining 10 per cent of Canadian premises within 10 to 15 years.”

So, there is hope, if I can only convince my 10-year old to wait 10 to 15 years to update “Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare” for his Xbox. (Luckily, he goes to a rural school, so most of his friends are also waiting patiently for the download to finish.)

Because we don’t have a fixed cable, we access the Internet through a tower, wirelessly — “fixed wireless broadband.” This is not the same thing as the “mobile wireless technology” the CRTC refers to in its third objective. Mobile wireless technology is the 3G and 4G data that you use to watch Facebook videos on your phone. If you don’t have access to cellular data at your farm, it’s your time to do cartwheels — snowbanks or not. This could make a big difference for you.

We have pretty good cell service on our farm, but as anyone who’s used their phone Internet as a WiFi hotspot knows, most cell phone plans come with limited data, and high costs if you accidentally download more than your allotted amount. While my phone plan theoretically offers unlimited data, when I download too much in one month I get a text telling me that, to make things fair for everyone, my data speed will be throttled back to nearly nothing until the end of the billing period. While the CRTC objectives mention unlimited data for users with fixed broadband connections, there is no mention of requiring SaskTel to make truly unlimited data plans available to those farmers who have no other options.

The promise and the truth

The problem with a lot of things related to Internet speed is that the theory doesn’t match the reality.

In theory, my Internet problems should already be solved.

Back in 2011, the CRTC issued Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2011-291. In this document, the CRTC said: “it would be in the public interest to establish universal target speeds for broadband Internet access in Canada. This should ensure that all Canadians, particularly those in rural and remote areas, can benefit from a great level of broadband connectivity. In this decision, the Commission establishes target speeds of 5 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream.”

In 2017, the best Internet provider I can find in my area offers me a maximum download speed of 2 Mpbs. That’s the advertised speed. As with most companies, in reality our download speeds aren’t usually as fast as the advertised top speed. The provider we use has great service staff who do their best to keep me happy; they just don’t have access to more spectrum, and I’m five country miles away from their tower.

A sharp-eyed reader from the CRTC might argue that I have access to download speeds of 5 Mbps through a national company that offers Internet service via satellite. This is not untrue. However during “peak periods” this company slows certain data well below that speed according to its “traffic policies.” Other users updating Facebook, playing online video games or watching Ghostbusters on Netflix would get priority over me while I tried to upload a Grainews photo to our Winnipeg server. As well, when I input my postal code into the company’s website, it outputs a statement saying that it “wouldn’t recommend” me trying to use Netflix with the plan they could offer me out here.

And so, I’m still in the same place I was on December 21, when I was out in the sun, blissfully unaware of the CRTC’s latest announcement.

The Internet speed the CRTC thinks city people need is 25 times the speed I’m supposed to be getting, and five times the speed the CRTC has declared as a “target speed” for people like me. Now, there is a new fund in place to focus on making sure city people can watch Netflix on three devices at once, while I’m still waiting to download the map of areas with fixed broadband posted on the CRTC’s website.

As I’ve said before in this space, it was never any different. Electricity, telephones, television channels… all of these things came later to rural areas than cities. When my 10-year old complains about slow download speeds, I counter by telling him “when I was your age, we only had two TV channels.” Today we have way more TV channels than anyone would ever want to watch. I can imagine it now… one day, decades from now, my son will use his insanely fast on-farm Internet connection to tell me by video-link about his own kid’s complaints: “I have to drive all the way to Weyburn to use the teleport machine to get to Hawaii.”

The post Editor’s Column: New Internet plan, same problems appeared first on Grainews.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said it was establishing a new fund that providers will pay into that will invest $750 million over five years to build or upgrade broadband infrastructure with a focus on improving access in underserved areas.

Telecom companies with revenues of $10 million or more already contribute a percentage of their profits to subsidize basic phone services. Companies currently pay about 0.5 per cent of their telecom revenue.

Internet revenues, which are currently excluded, will now be included in the calculation of what companies have to pay for the new fund, potentially chipping away at an increasingly profitable area for providers.

With consumers moving to streaming services such as Netflix, offering internet access has become more lucrative for Canadian companies than offering television services.

Canadian telecom and cable companies made $9.81 billion in revenue from the supply of internet connections in 2015, outstripping the $8.92 billion companies made from cable, satellite and internet-enabled television subscriptions, the CRTC said in October.

The CRTC also set a download speed target of 50 megabits per second, well above its previous target of five megabits, and recommended providers offer an unlimited data option for fixed broadband. The regulator did not set a price cap.

In 2015, about 82 per cent of Canadians had access to internet at those speeds.

Providers that are not able to meet those targets will be able to apply for financing from the new fund, which will be run at arms’ length from the CRTC. Only those applying for funding will be obliged to meet the targets.

Applicants will be required to secure supplementary funding from the regional or federal government and put their own investment into the proposed project.

In its budget earlier this year, the Canadian government set aside up to $500 million over five years for improving broadband service in rural and remote communities.

— Reporting for Reuters by Leah Schnurr.

The post CRTC makes broadband a basic service appeared first on Grainews.

I thought I’d do a little research before I wrote about Internet access in rural Canada. So I turned to the Internet, typed in some likely search terms and… waited. Then I waited some more.

I live on a farm in southeast Saskatchewan. Although oil activity has fallen off drastically in the past year, there’s still plenty of business out here. Oil battery sites, some drilling and of course, farming. But even living near all of these businesses doesn’t guarantee reliable high-speed Internet on our farm.

We don’t have Internet access through wired-in cables like most city people. We use a small dish on our roof to pick up signals from a tower five miles away. Some days it works great and we have “pretty good” Internet access. When that’s not working, we can use the data connections on our phone to access the Internet. But if I have a big file to download, like a map update for our Garmin, I sometimes resort to making the 100-km round trip drive to the library in Weyburn, or I’ll wait until I’m visiting my parents in Saskatoon (sort of like dragging laundry home when I was in university).

We are getting by. For now. But we certainly don’t have the reliable Internet service that would let us do things other Canadians are doing. Cutting off our TV subscription and watching TV online or using our Internet connection to replace our landline phone are not options for us.

This morning, a chemical company rep phoned my husband. She offered him a deal. If he would watch their 20-minute video online to learn about their new herbicide, they’d send him a gift and enter him in a draw. “I don’t think I can this morning,” he said. Our connection was having a slow day. “I’ve been calling farmers from across Canada,” she said. “And you won’t believe how many are saying the exact same thing!”

The options

If I lived in Estevan or Weyburn, SaskTel (Saskatchewan’s Crown Corporation phone provider) would offer me their “Ultra high-speed Internet,” with download speeds of up to 25 megabytes per second. This would be plenty fast. I could download Garmin maps and more commodity marketing information than we could read. If he was allowed, our son would be able to play online video games with his friends from school.

If I lived in Regina or Saskatoon, I could subscribe to SaskTel’s infiNET, with the “blazing speed,” as they call it, of 260 Mbps. The highest-end plan would cost $140 per month, but even $80 per month would give me 50 Mbps.

The problem with farming is that, more often than not, you wind up living on a farm. Out here, a couple of companies offer access to Internet signals from nearby towers. The highest-end commercial package advertised by our provider costs about the same as infiNET’s blazing speed, $140/month. But instead of infiNET’s 260 Mbps, the advertised top speed out here is two Mbps. That’s right. Two. Less than one per cent of the top urban speed, for the same price.

There is one more option. One company will put a satellite dish on my roof, then send the signal directly from my roof to a satellite — no tower necessary. This company will sell me a package with download speeds of five or even 10 Mbps. Unfortunately, they reserve these top download speeds for customers watching videos through online services like Netflix or YouTube. If you want to download other files, like the draft pages of Grainews our production guy, Steve, in Winnipeg, sends me, this company limits the top download speed during daytime hours to 300 kilobytes per second (that’s 0.3 Mbps).

It’s disheartening to see this sad selection of options at a time when the Internet is becoming a standard part of the landscape. The frontpage of the federal CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) website says this: “It is now possible to use the Internet to watch TV and make phone calls. You can even call 9-1-1.” Well, it might be possible for some.

Oh, the whining

I know some of you are mumbling things like, “She should find something important to complain about,” or, “Is she really that desperate to watch Netflix?”

In self-defence, I give you four reasons why this is an important rural issue:

1. We’re trying to do business. I’m sure nobody would disagree that the Internet is critical to farm businesses. Never mind watching TV — grain marketing information, weather forecasts, banking information and crop insurance program administration is all online.
2. Give us the news. Many people are getting their news from the Internet these days. Everyone loves a video. Our own machinery editor, Scott Garvey, makes all kinds of great videos for our E-quip website (online at grainews.ca/video). Don’t tell Scott, but I often can’t watch them. It’s just too frustrating for me to wait for the videos to download.
3. We want to keep up with the Jones. While I was a teenager, large-dish satellite TV was a new thing, and I was thrilled to watch MTV, right there in our living room in the middle of the Prairies! These days, kids are watching videos on YouTube. Now they want to use the Internet to play video games online. For isolated rural kids that don’t have friends within winter walking distance, this can be a nice way to socialize. If your connection can’t keep up, your kid can’t play. I don’t think it will be much fun explaining that on a blizzard-y Sunday afternoon, when my kid’s old enough for this sort of thing. (I know. “Kids should be outside doing farm things.” But I’m leaving this reason on my list anyway.)
4. The world is getting ahead of us. As web developers gain access to faster and faster Internet speeds, they’ll use them. They’ll build more exciting web pages with more videos and faster-moving graphics. Why not? But will we even be able to look at those pages with our farm-style connections?

Remember when we first had dial-up Internet access? Now you need speeds higher than that to access many of the websites where you do business. Just when we caught up and got access to two Mbps Internet with satellites and towers, the rest of the world has moved to something more than 10 times faster.

What can I do?

I wish I knew. The CRTC has been doing a survey on Internet availability, but that finished at the end of February. They are also holding a public consultation in Quebec in April. It’s clear that the CRTC is aware of the problem, but whether it has the power, funds or desire to fix the problem for people like you and me is another question.

You could try getting in touch with a provincial or federal politician, and explaining the situation to them. Let’s hope this is more productive for you than it was for me.

I’m sure columns just like this were written in the past when other utilities were still new. There were probably sentences like, “How will I keep my son at home on the farm when the bright lights of electricity are shining in town?” Or, “How can a farmer get the latest wheat prices if we can’t afford to install a telephone?” Eventually, even the most remote farms got access to power and phones.

There’s no reason to believe history won’t repeat itself and make this column completely irrelevant in 10 years. But getting from here to there will likely involve some lobbying, some frustration and drinking several cups of coffee while we wait for files to download.

The post Editor’s Column: The lowdown on rural Internet access appeared first on Grainews.