The Province of Ontario is not talking about their pledge to have high-speed internet access available throughout Ontario by the end of 2025.
Sudbury.com reached out to a provincial spokesperson requesting a phone interview on Monday. The request was denied, and their written response failed to adequately address the inquiry.
After reiterating the interview request, Office of the Minister of Infrastructure senior communications advisor Andrea B. Chiappetta wrote back, “As noted in my previous email, the statement and background I provided stands.”
The statement included known information about the province’s nearly $4-billion pledge to bring reliable high-speed internet to every community across the province by the end of 2025.
The background information included a link to the same map of high-speed internet projects and availability Sudbury.com linked to in Monday’s story about the NDP’s pessimism regarding the province's high-speed internet pledge.
There are numerous “pending projects” in the map, including a wide swath of land around Manitoulin Island, but no projected timeline is included.
As such, the key points in Sudbury.com’s written inquiry, which sought information on whether the province anticipates reaching their 2025 goal and whether there are unique challenges in Northern Ontario (and what the solutions might be), were not addressed.
The province’s unwillingness to speak to this matter says a lot, Nickel Belt NDP MPP France Gélinas told Sudbury.com.
“They know they are in trouble in Northern Ontario,” she said. “They already know they are not going to meet this target in Northern Ontario. They’re not proud of this, so I guess they don’t want to talk about it. The less you talk about it, the better they look? I’m not sure.”
The province’s map of high-speed internet progress is also problematic, she said, adding that it has repeatedly indicated there’s high-speed internet in areas of Nickel Belt where there is none.
They tend to correct the map, and then repeat the mistake in subsequent map updates, according to Gélinas.
Earlier this week, a handful of NDP MPPs joined telecommunications experts in a virtual hearing to discuss the city’s high-speed internet pledge, as well as the limited cell phone coverage in Northern Ontario.
They expressed pessimism that the province would follow through on its pledge to ensure high-speed internet is available throughout Ontario by the end of 2025.
This pledge defines high-speed internet access as 50 megabits per second download and 10 megabits per second upload speeds.
As it stands, the province continually puts out requests for proposals for “huge areas of the north,” which only Rogers and Bell have the capacity to bid on, thereby leaving out smaller companies with local knowledge of Northern Ontario, Gélinas said.
”The taxpayer pays Bell to put up the $1-million tower, which Bell now owns, and then they sell us access to these towers ... at what the market can bear,” she said, adding that users in Northern Ontario end up paying a lot more for internet service than those in southern Ontario as a result.
“The strategy that works in southern Ontario is great, because they encourage competition,” she said. “There will never be competition in small, rural, Northern Ontario. There’s no money to be made.”
Although satellite high-speed internet is already available throughout the vast majority of Northern Ontario via Elon Musk’s Starlink, Gélinas noted the regular hardware cost of $759 and minimum monthly cost of $140 is “not reasonable.”
Additional NDP hearings and consultations about telecommunications will take place throughout the summer and into the fall. New dates will be announced at tomrakocevicmpp.ca/telecom.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.