A little ray of sunshine

The news out of the northern part of Queens County has not been all that great this fall, the fire that destroyed the elementary school being the prime example. Now there is a ray of sunshine.

High speed internet is coming back.

TDC Broadband, the company which worked so hard to bring broadband internet to the area and then ran into money problems, is turning the service back on this week. An investor from British Columbia has provided the spark needed to get the service restarted.

Now it will be up to the people of the area to sign on for the service, in order to make it viable. It is a classic case of use it or lose it, a truism which applies in double strength to the rural parts of Nova Scotia.

The people associated with TDC Broadband have no doubt that local people will support the service and make it successful. Because of encouragement from the Region of Queens, they chose the area to serve as a pilot project for their plans to bring high speed internet to rural Nova Scotia, and intend to see it going successfully here before moving on to other parts of the province.

It was on May 17 of this year that broadband internet service was installed at my house, a module placed on the roof to receive signals from a tower located in Caledonia. The service was little short of amazing for someone used to the slow waits associated with dial-up internet. It was a cadillac of a system, at the forefront of technology.

However, by July 17 there were rumours that the company was having financial problems. The brothers who run the company – Ted, Carter and Dennis Cockerill – were overly generous in the pilot project, allowing customers to be hooked up for free while the system was having the bugs worked out. Also, they absorbed the cost of the $350 module needed to bring the service to a house.

The service shut down in August while TDC Broadband searched for the funding needed to solve their cash flow problems. Meetings were held with potential backers, some of them frustrating. The brothers had invested everything of their own and had no more to offer as security. What they needed was enough money to get the service turned back on, so that fees from customers could start coming in, and then to expand the service.

It is fortunate for North Queens that they did not give up. They built a financial plan that would enable the service to be successful. They kept knocking on doors, both government and private, knowing that they were in a time hammerlock. On one side, the company providing the main feed from central Canada was unable to wait much longer for the monies owed them, and on the other was the fact that local people were beginning to look at the option of installing slower and less effective systems in their homes and businesses.

Then, an investor from the other side of the country had enough faith to provide the funds to have the service turned back on. Now the company is busily signing contracts with the customers who were part of the original pilot project, and is getting ready to hook up new customers.

The price for the service has actually dropped. People can now have broadband internet service for $39.99 a month, instead of the $59.99 originally proposed. They have to pay for the module, at $350, and pay for a $65 installation fee – all of which is fair and reasonable. Or, customers can agree to pay $49.99 a month and pay a $100 deposit on the module, plus the installation fee.

In the long run, of course, buying the module and paying the lower monthly rate is the cheaper option. The company will upgrade the module for owners when necessary for no additional fee, and will also pay a $150 rebate if it is no longer required.

In rural Nova Scotia, we are like everyone else, acting like moths attracted to the bright lights of shops and services offered in larger urban areas. We prefer the lifestyle made possible by rural areas but too often buy our gas and groceries in larger centres, allowing our own businesses to wither away.

Rural people themselves have the power to stop that. For us, it means signing up quickly for internet service, not waiting until next year to see how it goes. We do that almost as an act of faith in our community, aware that broadband service is vital for ours and other rural areas. And as a service to our readers, I note here that the number to call in order to get hooked up is 1-866-384-4832.



Tom Sheppard can be reached at tsheppar@ca.inter.net