GrainsWest Fall 2019

Tech 2019 Grains West 28 FEATURE HANE DEBOCK KNOWS THE frustration of poor internet service. He deals with it constantly on his family farm a half-hour drive west of Barrhead. While his wireless internet service is good enough for checking market prices, he still has to go online late at night or early in the morning to download large files. DeBock, who is the Alberta Barley region five director-at-large, said that the greatest consequence of his unreliable internet access is a reluctance to use wireless-dependent farming technology. “I would guess that I’m probably missing out on some things, because I don’t bother with the technology because I know it won’t work here,” he said. For example, he can’t use RTK steering, a technology that enhances GPS farming systems. Provincial governments across the country are promising millions in funding to provide reliable internet service to underserved Canadians including farmers such as DeBock. Ahead of only Italy among G7 nations, Canada now ranks 29th on the International Telecommunications Union’s ICT Development Index, which measures the performance of global communications technologies by country. By 2021, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) expects 90 per cent of Canadians to have access to download speeds of 50 megabytes per second (mbps) and upload speeds of 10 mbps. To help achieve this goal, the CRTC has created the $750 million Broadband Fund for projects that will improve internet access for remote and rural communities. The CRTC announced in 2018 that the fund will complement private- and public-sector initiatives, with a call for applications to go out this year. This is in addition to $500 million in federal funding dedicated to improving rural and remote internet access through Connect to Innovate. This program aims to assist 300 communities by 2021. So far, 32 Alberta communities have received a total of $20.9 million through S BY CULLEN BIRD POWER WLAN LAN INTERNET 1 2 3 4 Connecting rural Alberta to a high-speed future