Last week’s letter from Courtney Wyman printed in the Yarmouth Vanguard in regards to the availability of Broadband Internet in all communities in South West Nova Scotia is the reason for this post.
I was happy to be part of the Rural Broadband project when it was conceived by our government over two years ago. It was a very large commitment, many of the traditional Internet Service Providers (ISP) were not interested in covering our commitment of 100% of our population. Our government devised a program that with an injection of about 75 million dollars and through RFP that we would find companies willing to build out a system to ensure this 100% coverage. Three ISPs were awarded the contracts, Seaside Communications for the North, Eastlink in the South West and OmniGlobe Networks in the rural parts of Halifax County. The most important part was that the build out needed to be complete by the end of 2009.
We were all very upset on December 9th, to find out that things would not be complete until the May 2010, this was the first that we had heard about the delay since the NDP government came to power. Worst of all, is that, even though Broadband is available to about 94% of our population , the remaining 6% seems to here in South West (by the calls I get, mostly the constituents of Argyle).
Eastlink seems very cavalier and vague in it’s discussions with possible clients, I know that through my intervention that Eastlink contacted the Wymans and basically were unwilling to help. Many businesses and students like Courtney are being left behind by this mess up and my plea to Eastlink is, hurry up we’ve waited too long now!