High speed makes inroads
Greg Hoekstra Haliburton Echo - Tuesday, August 21, 2007 Updated @ 9:42:45 AM 

Haliburton County is finally being brought up to speed - high speed, that is. 

Last Wednesday, representatives from Bell Canada held an open house at the West Guilford Community Centre to announce their intentions to bring high speed DSL internet to West Guilford, Kennisis Lake, Eagle Lake, Carnarvon, Gooderham and Kinmount over the next few weeks. A similar information session is being planned for Saturday, August 25 from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Jug City in Carnarvon. 

Jim Neubauer, general manager for Bell Canada's Eastern Ontario sector, estimates that between 200 to 300 homes are already eligible for service in the West Guilford area, and that within three weeks anywhere from 1,100 to 1,300 homes in Guilford, Eagle Lake and Kennisis Lake will be eligible for service. In addition to that, high speed will also be available to roughly 500 homes in Carnarvon, 300 homes in Gooderham and 300 homes in the Kinmount area. 

Neubauer said what first brought Bell's attention to Haliburton County was a recent deal with Gerry Kowalski, who is building the Silver Beach lifestyle community just outside of Haliburton village. 

In May, Kowalski struck a deal with Bell Canada, allowing them to be the exclusive provider to his development, so long as they brought high speed internet to the Lake Kashagawigamog area. 

"Silver Beach helped us realize that we have both local businessmen and municipal governments all very excited and willing to be partners with us," said Neubauer. "So even though Silver Beach might be miles away [from West Guilford] it was the kick start or the driver to allow us to get some more fibre optics in this area." 

After a story appeared in the Echo on May 15, Neubauer said Bell received a number of calls from local businesses and resident eager to see if high speed Internet would be available in their area too. 
He said it was that eagerness that ultimately led the company to explore further business opportunities here. 

"When you have choices as to where you deploy your facilities, you absolutely want to go not only where there are people, but also where there is a willing audience to purchase your product," said Neubauer. 

Up to this point, much of Haliburton County has been forced to use dial-up for their Internet, since the hardware and cabling for high speed DSL just wasn't in the area. Since high speed Internet can range anywhere from 10 to 40 times faster than dial-up, Neubauer said it's a highly sought-after commodity, particularly for those who wish to work from home or the cottage. 

For the time being, high speed DSL will only be available within a five-kilometre radius of the six chosen sites, which were picked to provide maximum coverage. (High speed was already available to roughly 4,000 homes in the villages of Haliburton and Minden). However, at last Wednesday's open house Bell representatives weren't turning anyone away. Instead, they were taking down visitors' information to plot where they might next provide service. 

"Now that we have the main equipment up here we can look at expanding out over the next few years," said Kawartha area network manager Dennis Medley to one interested customer from the Haliburton Lake area. 

Though Medley noted that the company has already exceeded their budget for this year, he hinted at possibly expanding the service in the next two years to communities such as Fort Irwin, Ingoldsby, and the Redstone Lake area. Neubauer added to that by saying that Bell would continue to explore and research expansion options over the upcoming months. 

"Basically, we want to make sure we have local intelligence before we deploy any more hardware," he said. "You can't just do it from 100 miles away. We need to understand, are these cottagers that are there only in the summer, or are they full-time residents and what is the probability that they will want our service." 

"My main focus has been to put in that information highway, which is the fibre optics, to ensure that we have room to grow. Once that is done, the next business case is for the hardware to support a community. Without the cabling nothing can happen, so having it in place in this area definitely a good thing for Haliburton." 

Local politicians seemed to agree with those sentiments, particularly since the County of Haliburton had hoped to have area residents connected by now through another company - W3 Connex. 

In 2006 the county entered into a contract with W3 to connect municipal government buildings, schools, and health care facilities with high speed fibre optic Internet. Haliburton County Warden Murray Fearrey said that end of the bargain is now "virtually complete" but also noted that he was disappointed the company hadn't made further strides to provide residential service, which they had originally planned to do. 

"At the time [W3 Connex] indicated that they would also enter into the residential market, but quite frankly that hasn't happened, so there has been a void there for high speed Internet," said Fearrey. "The contract was for the hard fibre, so in that regard taxpayers haven't taken a shortfall here, but at the same time, what taxpayers expected hasn't happened." 

Dysart Deputy-reeve Bill Davis agreed with Fearrey, and said the municipality couldn't wait any longer for W3 Connex to come to the table. 

"One of the biggest questions I hear from not only local residents but also seasonal resident is 'when is high speed coming?' The assumption was that W3 would have them up and running by now. When Murray and I saw that that wasn't going to happen we knew that we had to do something different," he said. 

Davis said he first made contact with Neubauer after last year's tornadoes, and since then Dysart has worked to foster a relationship with Bell Canada. That relationship was further strengthened by the Silver Beach development, and though not all the municipality's residents will benefit immediately, Davis said he feels happy with the progress made so far. 

"It's not going to be all things for all people today, but this is a good thing for our community and a step in the right direction," he said. 

Fearrey added to that, saying that with each passing day the need for high speed internet access increases. As a result, neither the county nor the municipality could pass on an opportunity to have service delivered to it's residents. 

"[High speed internet] is a way of communication that has become pretty much a necessity now, so when W3 didn't happen, we decided that we should encourage Bell to push forward and get involved in the bigger picture here," said Fearrey. 

"This is not to say that W3 won't still go ahead with their plans for residential, but in the meantime we can't sit around and wait forever. We have to encourage what we can for our people, and it's exciting to see Bell playing an active role in Haliburton County and starting to bring some of the services that are expected to be here."