Evidence of meeting #94 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was access.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:55 p.m.
Project Manager, Montcalm Télécom et fibres optiques
No. I mean, there is the technology to do it today. I know that for sure. There's a way to pull cables and things like that. So don't worry, that can be done.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
All right. Thank you.
I'll turn over whatever time I have left to my friends across.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Just to follow along the lines of where Mr. Eglinski was going, do you know if they are pre-wiring when they're doing infrastructure, building roads, and those sorts of things? Are they building it into the actual infrastructure?
4:55 p.m.
Project Manager, Montcalm Télécom et fibres optiques
No. They open the street three times, one year at a time, just to make sure they bother everybody.
4:55 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
4:55 p.m.
Project Manager, Montcalm Télécom et fibres optiques
We call that “planning”. Planning is something that exists here but nowhere else.
4:55 p.m.
Project Manager, Montcalm Télécom et fibres optiques
It's funny, but that's the reality. Everybody knows that. An abandoned pipeline, abandoned waterline, abandoned conduit has value in the whole telecommunication infrastructure, no doubt.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
In British Columbia, in my area, they are starting to do that. I'm just not sure if it's everywhere.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
I was just going to say, Dan, in answer to you, that when I was the mayor of the City of Fort St. John, when our new subdivisions were going in, starting about 2002, we were fortunate to put in conduit for future connections.
4:55 p.m.
Project Manager, Montcalm Télécom et fibres optiques
That is happening. That's something else. In new areas where they're planning to build houses and things like that, they will put in conduit. They're going to ask the facility providers, including the cable provider, the gas provider, the electricity provider, and the telecommunication provider, to join together and build conduit. In that case that exists, but on long routes they don't do that yet.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
At the tail end of your presentation, Mr. Hogan, you only had 30 seconds to talk about the very interesting solution you're proposing. From my point of view, it kind of balances between the cost and some of the obstacles. It brings in a private and public partnership, the way I understood it. As an organization, you claim not to own any infrastructure. Can I ask you to go through it and explain how you are planning to implement a solution like that?
5 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, SouthWestern Integrated Fibre Technology
When we look at any normal rural area, there are services and buildings. The white square on this slide has the points of presence, and those are owned by private providers today. Let's say the outside ones are Bell Canada and some of the spurs are some smaller providers. All those services are privately held. We go to RFP. We've identified where all those yellow pieces are by doing a pre-qualification with the providers and requiring them to tell us where their fibre is.
We are going to go to public RFP and say these areas in the black spaces need fibre running through them. Not only are you going to run fibre through them, but you're also going to upgrade the telecom infrastructure, the switching stuff, where all the pieces of fibre plug into the existing points of presence, and we'll add some new ones: our little bird logo. The key point is that we have lots of points of interconnection. Some of that fibre could be owned by one company, and some could be owned by another company, but because our funding requires open access, they must be able to use each other's fibre. We can put in one piece of fibre, but all the providers can compete to deliver services across that fibre. That's where we think the competition comes from, and that's really how the private market works. When there's enough competition, it takes care of service and pricing naturally.
If you look at the left side, it's those orange areas where there's now a business case to connect a tower, a subdivision, a larger enterprise, like an on-farm operation that requires.... We have Mennonites in northern Grey County who have very sophisticated operations that require plans to be sent back and forth to their operation on a farm. They need high-capacity fibre to do that.
Does that answer your question?
5 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, SouthWestern Integrated Fibre Technology
The private sector company that wins our bid will be subsidized by our funding, but at the end of seven years, they will own 100% of the infrastructure. At the time of the RFP, we can place rules and restrictions on how that's used as part of the requirement to get our funding.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Okay, so the 16 regional and local municipalities come together. They've come up with a model, i.e., the model you just presented, and then they're bidding on it. In your auction, you are asking who will bid on this so long as they deliver this model.