Canada’s newest broadband initiative got a boost in the arm with the latest budget from the Federal Government. The federal Conservatives increased the funding for Canadian Broadband projects by $225 million in the next three years, beginning in 2009-10.
The new Canadian Broadband Initiative is expected to provide funding for communities that are without service or underserved at the moment. It hopes to provide rural and remote areas with affordable broadband services.
With many areas in Canada being rural and many communities having far too few people to make broadband profitable for service providers, the Canadian Government has to subsidize the private sector to deliver broadband. However, critics have called this new Canadian Broadband Initiative as “modest”, especially when comparing to other nations throughout the world.
For example, the US stimulus package included $2.8 billion for broadband providers to service rural and underserviced areas.
Michael Geist, an internet law professor in Ottawa has stated that this commitment falls short of the Conservative party’s own election promise of $500 million over 5 years. This commitment is for $75 million a year instead of $100 million a year, but the implementation date for the latest broadband initiative has been moved up a year in its implementation date.
Broadband is seen as a way to provide more services electronically, including things such as medical information. It also opens avenues of education not available to many Canadians because of the lack of broadband service.
With this latest initiative to provide broadband to Canadians, Canada will retain its position as the most-connected country among the G7 nations.
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Can you give me the requirements to apply for our island to be included in the Broadband Canada initiative?
Kind regards
Paul Neale
Chamber of Commerce