The Redwood Meadows community has succeeded in a preliminary step towards fibre optic internet.
In a deal with Axia, an Alberta company that specializes in servicing rural communities with high speed internet, if the community can get the majority of its residents to sign up, the company would invest in upgrading the Redwood Meadows’ infrastructure and install a fibre optic network.
“The service we currently have out in Redwood Meadows – we have a couple of options – but they both were not meeting the needs of our community through variability and speed and I guess customer service,” said Mike Decore, the townsite’s communication representative.
Axia requested that the community get as close as possible to 80 per cent (290) of its homes to sign up for a monthly one gigabit (equivalent to 1,000 megabits) per second plan for $99 by Dec. 31.
As of Jan. 2, the community had 228 homes sign up, which Decore said is a promising number.
Currently, the cost for internet service combined with TV and landline phone ranges between $150 and $250 for all three services, according to a community website created to promote Axia. The proposed new service is estimated to cost around $125 to $155 with quicker and higher-quality service.
“You couldn’t download large files, you couldn’t do visual calls – Skype or Facetime or anything like that – because it would just cut out,” Decore said. “We have a few students that live out here with their family that (couldn’t) download homework from their respective schools – there just wasn’t enough bandwidth.”
The community first reached out to Axia about nine months ago and by September it had successfully generated interest from 30 per cent of the community as well as gained approval from the Tsuu T’ina Nation, which owns the Redwood Meadows land.
Decore said so far residents have been supportive of the potential internet service and have even had teams of community members going door-to-door explaining Axia’s service and convincing their neighbours to get on board.
The toughest ones to convince so far has been the older population.
“We have some people that have been here that have lived in the same house since the late ‘80s that don’t have internet and that don’t want to have internet,” Decore explained. “Out here, we don’t have cable television so the providers have to be satellite provided and they are quite expensive. So we’re letting them know you can get Netflix now, you’d be able to stream stuff online that’s not available to you now.”
Redwood Meadows has a population of roughly 1,100 people and 349 homes.
The townsite looked into other options including Telus and Shaw but found neither to be feasible due to being too expensive or because the community fell just below their population threshold.
Craig Maynard, who is an instructor and home business owner in Redwood Meadows, said he relies on a stable network to do his work but his current service is too slow.
“It’s DSL right now, basically. It’s very spotty, sometimes poor depending on the traffic load. I’m an instructor and I do a lot of online video things,” Maynard said, adding that includes live streaming.
“The old service, when it’s running really well, is about 20 megabits per second. It can slow down from there quite a bit,” he said. “I have to tell the wife not to use Netflix you know, ‘Everybody off the network while I’m doing my work.’”
Maynard said he thinks having high speed internet might boost the value of his home if he were to sell it.
“High speed internet is now a feature that people like to have especially in country homes,” he said.
Shannon Kaltenruner, also of Redwood Meadows echoed this notion.
“So many of us work from home – I am a student at (Mount Royal University) and rely on the internet every day,” she said. “It certainly would be an asset to our community and hopefully increase the resale value.”
“Right now, I am trying to upload six pictures to Facebook and it is taking about five minutes.”
Installation of the fibre network is estimated to begin in the spring using a minimally invasive technique known as directional drilling.
For more information, visit Redwood Meadows’ community-made website at www.givergig.com.
