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The Challenge of Rural Broadband Access in Canada’s Technology Mosaic

The Challenge of Rural Broadband Access in Canada’s Technology Mosaic. Gerry Briggs Broadband for Rural and Northern Development Pilot Program Phone: +1-613-948-5045 Fax: +1-613-948-5044 Email: briggs.gerry@ic.gc.ca Web: http://broadband.gc.ca. Federal Government Program.

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The Challenge of Rural Broadband Access in Canada’s Technology Mosaic

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  1. The Challenge of Rural Broadband Access in Canada’s Technology Mosaic Gerry Briggs Broadband for Rural and Northern Development Pilot Program Phone: +1-613-948-5045 Fax: +1-613-948-5044 Email: briggs.gerry@ic.gc.ca Web: http://broadband.gc.ca 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  2. Federal Government Program • The federal government of Canada will soon be taking a non-imposing funding approach to the rural broadband dilemma as opposed to exercising the usual federal regulatory channel on rural disparity of telecommunications. This approach relies on the marketplace to sort out the details, with full faith that the marketplace will best decide the appropriation of public funds. It is a hands-off approach in principle, however, no hands-off approach can go without some monitoring and steering. The goal of the program is to bring "broadband" to all Canadians by 2005, as the Prime Minister has stated more than once. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  3. Broadband to All Communities • The metrics for success are that all "communities" in Canada would have access to cable modem or DSL - like services for roughly the same price and the same level of service as those services offered in Canada's urban centres. Although no hard definitions have been imposed, the funding is intended to go toward the capital cost of infrastructure that would facilitate the offering of such services all the while abiding by a principle of "open access." 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  4. Broadband to All Communities Over 4000 rural and remote communities in Canada without broadband, representing a mere 15% of Canada’s population. • The metrics for success are that all "communities" in Canada would have access to cable modem or DSL - like services for roughly the same price and the same level of service as those services offered in Canada's urban centres. Although no hard definitions have been imposed, the funding is intended to go toward the capital cost of infrastructure that would facilitate the offering of such services all the while abiding by a principle of "open access." 1000 km South Korea in Proportion 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  5. Broadband Open Access? • So what is open access when it comes to broadband? Because of the complexity of the marketplace and the technology, we can assume that the answer is not straightforward. This paper does not intend to be reactionary to the unbundling of the network elements of the telephone company institution. Instead the paper will recognize the validity and equality of all players in the marketplace of broadband, including the cable television companies, dialup ISPs and inter-exchange carriers with their enterprise services. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  6. Technology Agnostic All mediums have to be considered as a means Of delivering broadband. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  7. Community Based Networks • Also, because of the rural scope of this contribution, an examination of a few rural "community-based" networks will accompany the for-profit incumbents. The most pragmatic approach would be to examine some of the current successful models of open access, then consider some ideals of open access, and look at some principles of open-access that do not close the door on the future. Open-access can be at the last-mile level and it can be at the backbone level. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  8. Example 1 – Atikokan (I) • To get a flavour of some Canadian examples of networks that have an element of open-access, we may want to start with some basic ideas at the local last-mile level. In one case we have the remote town of Atikokan, who has an independent dialup ISP that now offers a WIFI service to its customers in the form of a giant hotspot covering the town's radius of 2 km. The last-mile solution can be considered open-access simply because of the fact that WIFI is a well known standard whose CPE can be readily purchased at the retail level. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  9. Example 1 – Atikokan (II) • In this case open access means that the CPE is inexpensive. The WIFI standard has been so successful that there are many examples of entrepreneurs in remote areas of Canada that have built around this standard to achieve broadband access for their communities. The equipment is so inexpensive that internationally in developing areas, the standard is connecting small impoverished villages to larger broadband networks. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  10. In the remote town of Atikokan, the local ISP decided to install an 802.11B (WIFI) wireless hot spot that covers the entire town of about 4 km width. The residents can go to the local electronics shop to buy the relatively inexpensive CPE to get the service on their PCs 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  11. Example 2 – Morrisburg (I) • A more sophisticated broadband offering can be found in the rural town of Morrisburg, whose municipal office has purchased and installed a multi-strand fibre-optic network throughout the town's business and industrial districts. In this instance, a mock "central office" was erected across the street from the telephone company central office. This mock CO houses the fibre patch panel of 400 pairs of fibres running past every commercial and industrial property in town. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  12. Example 2 – Morrisburg (II) • The ethernet switch at the heart of the traffic aggregation currently has one source network that is connected by two T1s that run across the street to the telephone company’s central office. This network is open access for a couple of reasons. First, it is an inexpensive media converter that allows a NIC to be connected to the business customer premises fibre drop, and second, any number of "source" networks may be connected through the ethernet switch allowing for customers of various source networks to be separated by different subnet addresses. The switch is smart enough to route the traffic accordingly. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  13. The Town of Morrisburg decided to deploy a fibre-optic network with municipal money – which has in turn attracted industry on an international scale. The network is a hybrid of fibre and wireless. One benefit of having the municipality as a partner is the access to poles – assuming that the municipality owns the electrical distribution company as is the case in Morrisburg. Below left is an antenna installation on the town’s water-tower 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  14. Example 3 – Simcoe County (I) • Another example of an open access rural broadband network is the Simcoe County Access Network centered around a rural region of Canada. This network is thanks to a collaboration of five local electric utilities that replied to an RFP to serve the local school board, hospitals, universities and municipalities with a broadband enterprise-type service with internet. The "openness" comes from the price of services, which is $700 C per month for a 100 megabit connection over ten years - consistent to all users rather than negotiated behind the scenes. The open access is a question of price and contract consistency. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  15. Example 3 – Simcoe County (II) • It could be argued that tariffs that stipulate price of large services would mean that open access is available wherever a tariff is in effect. This might be true except for that most tariffs for such enterprise broadband services are prohibitive - especially in rural areas. This is more of a backbone open access rather than last-mile, and the same can be said of the Alberta Supernet, which intends to use the same pricing scheme as Simcoe County. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  16. Simcoe County Fibre Network ISP The rural municipality, hospital, schools, libraries, and university all on the same fibre network. The local ISP may opt for the service as well. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  17. Example 4 – Baie Comeau • In many rural areas, broadband will bring with it some kind of wirless solution. Industry Canada has now put into place spectrum policy that relaxes the requirements of certain wireless systems in licensed bands. The 3.5 GHz service in Baie Comeau, Quebec, and soon to be in Brockville, Ontario and surroundings will be using wireless equipment based on the DOCSIS (Data over Cable Service Interface Specification) standard. This standard is only as spectrally efficient as one bit per hertz in the equipment being deployed, however, in rural areas, spectrum efficiency is sacrificed for practicability. DOCSIS is most well known as the cable modem standard, and it is fortunate that the wireless version will be able to take advantage of the same kind of open-access methods that are being designed for the cable modem. The open access of any IP based system is about as open as the internet itself. Traffic can be routed to the appropriate source network, however QOS may be difficult to control. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  18. Example 5 – Remote BC • In the Columbia Mountain basin region of southern British Columbia, a network project is underway to bring an open network to the region. The BRAND program has specified that it prefers private-owned and operated networks, but the BC trust has offered some strong arguments to the contrary. There are three ideas of open access considered, the first of which is open access at the physical layer. This would be a publicly owned infrastructure with a given number of dark fiber strands and open points of presence to the public. Access to such an open POP would require some kind of qualification such as a license. The second, more preferred open access is at the transport layer with VLANs. Traffic is segmented across various switches and routers, and certain pools of IP addresses could communicate and see among themselves at the ethernet layer, but there are scalability issues with VLANs since there may only be a couple thousand VLANs on a typical network. Beyond this, a third type of open access is simply in the IP realm, such as with Alberta Supernet. Traffic would be segmented with VPNs. The scalability with IP is not as limited since the number of addresses is so vast. With IPv6 the set of possibilities will be even vaster. The Alberta Supernet model allows for some eight separate service providers on a network in its current design. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  19. Example 5 – Remote BC 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  20. Conclusion (I) • Rural and remote networks like the ones cited can give us some foundations on which to build the open access philosophy. Open access in rural areas means affordability, availability, and accessibility. These three elements can be seen to various degrees in each of the examples studied, and they will be encouraged in the models of rural broadband networks to come. There are many Canadian examples of infrastructure in rural areas that have been successful in varying ways, and the Broadband for Rural and Northern Development pilot program will continue to work with them and share its findings. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

  21. Conclusion (II) • It could be argued that tariffs that stipulate price of large services would mean that open access is available wherever a tariff is in effect. This might be true except for that most tariffs for such enterprise broadband services are prohibitive - especially in rural areas. This is more of a backbone open access rather than last-mile, and the same can be said of the Alberta Supernet, which intends to use the same pricing scheme as Simcoe County. 28 Apr - 1 May 2003 GSC-8 (Ottawa)

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