An Internet service provider believes having reliable and fast high-speed connectivity is one of the keys to a municipality’s prosperity.
That’s what Jason O’Connor, community relations officer for Axia Fibre Optic, told Barrhead town councillors at their Tuesday, March 14 meeting.
Axia Fibre Optic is an Alberta-based company that specializes in providing high speed Internet.
“What we want to do, is bring in, at no cost to the municipality, fibre optics to the homes and businesses that are in it and have you become one of our fibre towns,” he said. “Fibre optics is the fastest, biggest pipeline that you can get for Internet, voice and TV. Period. From now and into the future.”
O’ Connor said if Barrhead agrees to become a ‘fibre town’, its businesses and residents would have access to Internet that exceeds that of an urban centre.
Currently the communities of Vulcan, Nanton, Nobleford, Barnwell and Stirling are connected to Axia’s network while Pincher Creek, Raymond, Magrath, Hanna, Fort Macleod and Fairview are also in various stages of completion.
“We have $100 million bookmarked for this project, for 40 ‘fibre towns’, just in rural Alberta and we would like to invest in Barrhead,” O’Connor said, by having this type of connectivity Barrhead could increase the amount of business and tourism dollars coming into the town.
Using Vulcan as an example, O’Connor said five years before the municipality joined the Axia network the town was seeing a decline in the number of business licenses it issued at a rate of about two per cent annually.
“In the last two years, since we have been there it has been up 14 per cent, both years. And you can see it, when you drive up and down main street. There’s a bunch of new businesses all with the best Wi-Fi imaginable,” he said.
O’Connor attributed the increase in economic activity in Vulcan to two main reasons. The first being residents who opt for one of Axia’s services, are unsubscribing from services they no longer see as necessary, such as cable TV, saving roughly $78 per house hold.
“That’s about $120,000 that we hope stays in Vulcan for local services,” he said.
The other reason is because of the increased bandwidth available over fibre optics.
“For an engineer, wedding photographer or another small business that depends on having a high-upload speed for productivity, the 25 megabytes per second [available on Axia’s lowest priced plan] is just incredible,” O’ Connor said. “In the city [Calgary] I get four megabytes up and 15 down and that depends on the time of day.”
If the Town of Barrhead is interested in becoming one of Axia’s fibre towns the first step is to ensure there would be enough interest from residents to proceed.
“What we look for is 30 per cent of all serviceable addresses, that’s home and businesses, to express interest in becoming Axia customers through a survey on our website,” he said, adding the survey is non-binding.
As of March 14, 143 Barrhead residents expressed interest, following a visit by a street-survey team.
Coun. Ty Assaf asked if there were enough interest, how long would it take to get residents connected.
It depends on how each individual road and neighbourhood is laid out, O’Connor answered, adding they are able to use existing infrastructure such as power poles.
“If not we would have to use what we call micro trenches to each residence and that would take more time,” he said, adding if everything fell into place, the project could be completed by the end of 2018.
