Over the next 12 months, the county will work with Bell Aliant to bring high-speed connections to rural areas.
For people like Tiny Township Mayor Peggy Breckenridge, it can’t happen soon enough.
“I’ve already gotten tons of calls. There’s at least 20 per cent of our area not covered at all, and it’s not adequate,” she said.
“People are angry. Of the 95 per cent of the county that will be covered, in Tiny we’re covered 75 to 80 per cent. People are running small businesses, and we’re not too pleased.”
One of those business owners is Michael Kulyk, who is considering moving because of the lack of high-speed access.
“My business suffers since I am forced to update my home-office machines in between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. to avoid my speed being reduced by my satellite provider for using too much bandwidth, and I can only update one machine per night, lest I suffer the wrath of the Xplornet gods,” he said, adding his satellite system goes offline at least once each day.
“I have to keep a BlackBerry with me as the many outages of the satellite system due to weather and technical difficulties require me to have a backup e-mail system – so I end up paying even more money so I can communicate with my clients.”
Breckenridge experienced those realities earlier this month when she tried to get details about a provincial plan for Simcoe County growth. As part of a June 4 announcement on the Barrie-Innisfil boundary issue, the Ontario growth secretariat released a proposal that could sideline the county’s growth plan, which was approved last year.
“My office is in my home, and I’m on slow-speed. You have to open e-mail and then go onto a website and another. Slow-speed Internet complicated it,” she said.
Simcoe County received $1 million in provincial funding late last year to begin upgrading service this spring. Now, the plan is to do the upgrades over the next 12 months – to bring 95 per cent of county residents speedier access by early 2010.
More information about the project’s progress can be found online at http://ruralconnections.simcoe.ca.
lwatt@simcoe.com
