Industry Committee on Feb. 8th, 2018

[John Meldrum]

Yes. They're saying we have too much.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

But they're talking too much on the cellular side. Because you have a lot on the cellular side, they're encapsulating all that together and saying that you have too much, so you can't get fixed spectrum.

[John Meldrum]

Right, and the cap is in that particular band, the 2,500 band.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

That's also where you find the good fixed wireless spectrum that you want to use, right?

[John Meldrum]

That's what we chose for the fixed wire, for offering the service, yes.

The problem is that the equipment we bought is Huawei equipment, so it's carrier grade, but it only works on the 2,500 at the moment. We're not eligible, and we have stop sales on sectors.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Industry Canada says you're not eligible. It's not a pricing issue for you; it's just an eligibility issue.

[John Meldrum]

Yes. We will not be permitted to bid.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

That's just because in Saskatoon, or in Saskatchewan, they say you have too much right now.

[John Meldrum]

Right.

You've heard some of the other folks in the previous testimony talk about congestion with fixed wireless. We avoid that by stopping selling. We do not add more customers, so we're telling people today, “We can't provide you service because we don't have enough spectrum”.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

The issue that other people have mentioned is that big companies are hogging all the spectrum. We heard that two days ago, that you're hogging all the spectrum, and now you're telling me that you need more spectrum to be able to use it in the fixed wireless.

[John Meldrum]

Yes, it's cellular spectrum versus fixed wireless spectrum.

I think I have to add, too, because I read all that about the big companies hogging the spectrum—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

You're one of them.

[John Meldrum]

—that there is a process with Industry Canada to be able to challenge the holder of the spectrum to say, “You're not deploying it; I'd like to deploy it”. and you can force it through Industry Canada to be able to get the sub-licence for that area you're interested in.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Yes, I'm—

[John Meldrum]

It's typically deep rural.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

—I'm led to believe that they get around that challenge by putting white noise on the spectrum, or they're using it.... The way you challenge is that it's in use, but it's not serving people. That's the problem.

Is that true or not?

[John Meldrum]

In terms of cellular, I would say no. This process doesn't occur with the fixed.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Okay.

I've run over my time, but thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We're going to wind it down. We have five more minutes on each side, and then we'll be done.

Mr. Eglinski.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for giving us the extra time.

Mr. Meldrum, I'm in central Alberta. I go west of Edmonton to the B.C. border, and my colleague is between Edmonton and me. Of course, a big portion of our area is agricultural land like yours. It's flat with relatively good access by road every one or two miles, but then we move into very heavily forested areas with very little population and lots of rolling hills into the foothills of the Rockies, like my area. I know you have very similar terrain. The southern part is very flat and very remote, but then as you move north, you get into areas with very heavy bush and it's very similar to ours.

Have you had to take into account the differences in these terrains in any specific way, by using of different types of technology in northern or central Saskatchewan, or your heavily wooded areas, versus southern Saskatchewan, which has a very light population with very open terrain and not a lot of roads, etc.?

[John Meldrum]

Northern Saskatchewan is probably a little different from Alberta. The populations tend to be congregated, so they're easier to serve, and we're able to serve them with fibre. We have fibre that goes along the roadway, such as for La Ronge. We have fibre that goes up to La Ronge, and then we serve the people of La Ronge with terrestrial facilities.

We got some money from Connecting Canadians to take fibre up fairly close to the Athabasca basin, that area around Lake Athabasca, Stony Rapids, and those sorts of places. Again, once we can get there, we take microwave shots to get all the way into the Athabasca basin, but then we're able to provide Internet service to Stony Rapids via wire-line services.

That's probably the difference; whereas, the south is all about the lack of density and the lack of a business case to serve people because of the lack of density.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Do you see a need for this federal funding to assist the provinces or private corporations, or to feed areas like that, to give them the service that we're thinking we're going to provide them?

[John Meldrum]

We do still have some applications to Connect to Innovate. They haven't dealt with the Saskatchewan applications yet. There is some backbone in there for which some assistance is being requested, because there is no business case to provide that backbone. In this case, it's running more or less south of La Ronge over to Flin Flon and Creighton to the Manitoba border.

So yes, there is still a need for money to be able to install even backbone in those northern areas.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Okay. Thank you.

Sir, old waterlines, pipelines—I loved your answer. That's good. I'm interested and I'm excited, because we have lots of those running all over our province. Can you just answer a question for me? Let's say you have a waterline running down your city. You buy the old waterline or you get permission to use it. You run your fibre and you “tee off” into a building. How do you tee off? Do you have to dig down to that place and do your joint, or do you have a mysterious way of sending that fibre? I know that we can drill wherever we want underground in Alberta and pinpoint it to the inch.

[Pierre Collins]

Unfortunately, that was not me who was doing that.