TDC Broadband hoping for justice

TDC Broadband, you may remember, worked with the Region of Queens to use the Caledonia area as a pilot project for the establishment of rural high-speed internet. The service they set up was based on a feed from a tower in Baker Settlement and was beamed to participating households in North Queens.

We started receiving high speed service from TDC in May of 2006. It worked well, was fast, and the difference between it and the old modem service was like night and day.

As with many start-up companies, cash flow problems developed. The company had hoped and expected to be awarded contracts to provide the service elsewhere in the province, and in fact had begun to expand into Lunenburg County, with information sessions set up as far east as Chester.

For those with high speed broadband service, this may not seem as exciting as it did to those who had long been dealing with telephone modem service. I received emails from people in the Valley and along the South Shore who wanted to know how they could get TDC Broadband to expand into their areas.

This, you will remember, was before the province had decided to initiate province-wide broadband service.

In order to keep going, the company applied for loans to the provincial government agencies responsible for providing support to businesses to cover just these kinds of cash flow problems. It was required to submit to the government a business plan which outlined how they ran their business and their plans for the future.

As it turned out, during the 2006 provincial election campaign, the Progressive Conservative government decided to expand broadband service into all parts of Nova Scotia. As the only company successfully providing this kind of service in the province, TDC Broadband fully expected to be chosen to expand the service.

This did not happen. Instead, contracts were awarded to other companies, including EastLink, which bought the assets of the (by then) bankrupt TDC Broadband and which now uses the system to provide high speed internet to North Queens.

This month, notice of a lawsuit was filed in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court which states that the business plan and technology information submitted to the government by TDC was used to obtain proposals from other companies for providing the service to Nova Scotia.

The action, which is being handled by the firm Patterson Law, of Truro and Halifax, states that the company not only developed a method of delivering broadband high speed internet service to rural customers, but developed a workable business model for the delivery of the service.

The action says that TDC entered a contract with the province and the Municipality of Queens to implement what was called the Caledonia Project and that the necessary towers were installed, with the first customers beginning to receive broadband service by January of 2006. By mid 2006 there were no other providers of affordable broadband internet service in rural Nova Scotia, and Rodney MacDonald made it a campaign plank that the service would be provided to all of the province by the end of 2009. TDC Broadband was confident, based on discussions with those in the government, that it would be providing the service.

The action states that the company’s confidential business model and technology information were provided to the province. Seaside Communication, the action says, asked TDC for its knowledge about the system, but TDC refused. Subsequently, the action says, the province used TDC’s delivery method and business model as its basis for delivery of province-wide service, even though that information was confidential.

It also established a requirement of a performance bond of $500,000 per region in order to bid on the provision of rural service, a situation which would favour large companies, as a small company like TDC Broadband could not come up with those kinds of funds. Seaside Communication and EastLink were awarded the contracts.

TDC cried foul, and the lawsuit is the result.

Tom Sheppard can be reached at twsheppard@gmail.com