Is Bell finally going to flip the switch on that switch to the ON position and broadband the rest of Sauble Beach? Well ... don't hold your breath, but according to the CRTC, it is time to spend all that money the Feds had forced them to skim from the city-folk to fill the coffers for a fund specifically founded for just this purpose. The question is, though, will Bell comply? ...

When the deferral account was created in 2002, the CRTC directed the phone companies to put amounts equal to any potential rate reduction into the account. The aim was to keep rates high enough to encourage new competitors to enter the local phone market.

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WANT HIGH SPEED INTERNET in rural Bruce County? If you haven't been to the Bruce County website and filled out the form for the Broadband Initiative please do so now.

click for info: Bruce County Broadband Initiative

Maybe not precisely closure, but certainly good news to relate along the long road to our digital future: In my inbox this evening, a very kind email direct from the Honorable Maxime Bernier, our Minister of Industry his very self, in person ...

Dear Mr. Murphy:

Your Member of Parliament, Mr. Larry Miller, forwarded to me on December 4, 2006, a copy of your e-mail of September 24, 2006, regarding the delay of implementation of high-speed Internet access in the area where you live. I regret the delay in replying to you.

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A potential new solution to our highspeed access woes? In my morning emails, an sbp membership request from richg, and with it, a very interesting url to a very interesting pledge:

GBT provides and services high speed Internet using unlicensed frequencies. We provide internet and data connections ranging from 1mbps to 90mbps (depending on your area).

Our internet solutions are primarily based on wireless connections, making for a more affordable and reliable connection that that of cable or telephone (DSL).
[ via Grey Bruce Telecom Inc ]

Whoa ... say that again? A whole meg of bandwidth that's deliverable to the bandwidth-starved outback out behind D-Line? A top-end product boasting ninety megabits streaming broadband? For real? Today?

My inside informant at Bell told me this morning that broadband relief is on the way for rural Canada. "Expect 3Mbps download and 384k upload speeds, and expect to see it in Sauble sometime this year" -- only it's better than that, because it is here today. And what is it that has finally washed up on the beach to save us all? They call it Inukshuk and it's the future of highspeed, unplugged and everywhere:

Inukshuk is using pre-final-certification WiMAX technology to operate the network, making it the first large-scale WiMAX deployment in North America. Bell and Rogers used their preexisting infrastructure such as cellular towers to install the network, which operates in spectrum licensed to the companies already. Those spectrum licensing requirements stipulate that the service be made available in at least 25 unserved rural markets in the next year and 50 by March 2008.
[ via Canadian WiMAX network launched ]

Bell has a flash-laden pre-sales page but it crashed my browser so I can't say what it says. Rumour-mill, however, says the service is already live in some locales, and premium service will run about $65/month with a lower-grade option at about $50, which is only just pricier than the xDSL.

It looks like the future is speeding down our road as fast as it can, faster than our present internet connections here in SBP. While we now are stuck with the status quo , that being ISPs either unwilling, or unable or uncaring about providing high speed internet to all of SBP, it wont really matter much soon, and those unresponsive I.S.Ps should be very afraid.
This is from an article in the Hamilton Spectator , about the new electrical meters that are going to be installed that measure not only the usage, but the time of day the peak load is, and to do that and report back, they use a WiFi connection, that the homeowner can piggyback onto.

Hamilton's utility company is set to roll out its first "smart meters" that will help customers cut their electricity bills. And Canada's 10th largest city could soon see its streets, neighbourhoods and parks transformed into a massive wireless hotspot. Hamilton would be capable of offering cheap, high-speed Internet access to all who pass through.
"We know we need a telecommunications system to support smart metering," said Art Leitch, president and chief executive officer of Hamilton Utilities Corp. "The need to have telecommunications connected to every smart meter with every customer would lead us to having a Wi-Fi system that would make Hamilton a whole-city hotspot."

Enough is enough: it's time Bell flipped the switch and let flow the highspeed DSL internet connections to the rest of Sauble Beach. What follows are the facts, some of them official, some of them (ahem) unofficial insider stuff, but facts are facts and the fact is, there is no real tangible business or technical reason why we can't have highspeed to all of Sauble Beach.

The following article was sent in by our local resident expert and industry insider on all things telecommunicational; to protect their sources, they'd like to remain anonymous for now ...

We all know that high-speed access has been available to the downtown core for some time now. The official map says everyone north and east of 6th Street / D-Line (including Amabel-Sauble School), south and east of 6th St / D-Line until before that little road beside the highway, and about 1/2 of those living between the Sauble Parkway and the D-Line south of 6th (part of Manley Crescent and Forbes Dr), are not eligible for Bell Sympatico high-speed service, and everyone west of the Sauble Parkway (within 5km of Kirklands) is eligible ... and a huge number of them have it.

Maybe it's time we changed all that ...

There's little doubt that Internet is changing the face of cottage country tourism, and I applaud all these brave new and totally welcoming public Internet services like the free desktop at Two Chicks and Owen Sound's new GingerPress Café WiFi, I'm also realist enough to know that these things cost money to run -- to do this right, to make it work, there has to be a solid and workable business plan, but could it work?

Some time ago I wrote here alluding to a plug-and-play subscription solution that only needed a few hours with a screwdriver to be up and running as a full-fledged hotspot. The good news is that it's here, now, today, shrinkwrapped, ready to roll and on the air for only a few C-notes ...

The bad news is I've done the math for you and bottom-line, in many cases, running our own WiFi hotspot may still be just marginally a little rich for our village blood.

One of the questions I get asked over and over every summer is "Where can I get Internet access?" -- the good news is that there are answers, the better news is that there may soon be lots of answers.

Back in '95, my friend Gene would drive out from his cottage to our house several times a week; he'd become enthralled with some internet contest and to participate, he had to check his email regularly. Hard as it is to believe, in 1995, 'regularly' meant only a few times a week; back in those innocent days, our house was about the only place in Sauble where you could get Internet.

Today, your primary answer is the Sauble Beach branch of the Bruce County Libraries ... when it is open access is only 56k dial-up on quaint old machines, but it's there, it's affordable; it's access and nothing to sneeze at. Whatever works. Similar access can also be found at the new digs of the Wiarton Branch. Readers of my personal blog will know of a few unofficial hotspots in the village and I'll bet there may be a few added since then; I have also mapped a few more over in Owen Sound, although, if you've come here expecting toll WiFi I'm afraid you're still out of luck.

But maybe soon, and maybe sooner than you think.