Similar excitement, 77 years later

Paula Sibley, communications specialist with EastLink, told me she would be able to provide me with timely information as to the start-up of the service some time next week.

Everyone in the province, from the Region of Queens to the provincial government, recognizes the importance of high speed service. The Region of Queens took the lead in supporting service for the northern part of the county, assisting the ill-fated TDC Broadband in its efforts to get up and running, and then stay afloat.

The arrival of high speed service will in some quarters be greeted with the same enthusiasm evident 77 years ago, when electricity first came to Caledonia. In August of 1930, workers completed the transmission line from the Brookfields to Caledonia.

While that was going on, Donald Penney directed a crew of workers wiring houses in the area, with about half of them ready for power by the time the lines came in. Lights were to be turned on by Sept. 10, 1930, so efforts to get stores, the Masonic Hall and other large buildings wired were being pushed ahead quickly.

It is fascinating that one of the big players in this effort was the local Women's Institute. Under a committee headed by Mrs. A.M. Douglas, the Women's Institute had raised $243 at a guides' meet at Lake Nancy, in the middle of Caledonia, and voted to put all of it into the installation of 10 street lights, which the Institute would then maintain.

Also playing a role was the local Agricultural Society, which was in the process of arranging lighting for the Queens County Exhibition. And a new business in the area, Queens Canners, was being wired up. At the same time, telephone connections were being pushed out to West Caledonia, with a two-mile line, and residents were happy that the world was finally arriving on their doorstep.

Those power lines, in a roundabout way, connect to the story about high speed internet, whose technology is changing rapidly. The province is now reviewing all of the proposals for providing high speed service to rural parts of Nova Scotia, and has announced there will be three types of technology used to deliver the service.

Those three include DSL, which is described as digital data transmission over local telephone wires, cable (using cable television systems) and fixed wireless technology, connecting fixed locations with a wireless link. The system set up in North Queens appears to fit in the latter category, where towers beam signals to individual homes.

There is a fourth technology rearing its head, one that uses ordinary power lines to deliver high speed internet. Down in Texas, Broadband over Powerline (BPL) will be delivered to close to two million people in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, beginning at the end of this year.

This technology, which obviously utilizes power lines, is said to be faster than cable or DSL systems, and has matching upload and download speeds (in some systems the upload speed is slower than the download). Apparently, installation fees are minimal, since the system works via a modem plugged into any electrical outlet.

There's always a hitch, however. The power system seems to need to be of a smart grid type, which is two-way in that it collects data while transmitting power. Whether that is even feasible in Nova Scotia remains to be seen.

In any case, the wireless system used in North Queens seemed, to me, to be fast and reliable. With large company like EastLink set to assume the service, former and future broadband customers in the area will be able to sign on with confidence.

- Tom Sheppard can be reached at twsheppard@gmail.com