Slow, unreliable and pricey: CRTC gets earful about northern internet
CBC
Slow and spotty connections, prolonged outages, high prices and few options for service providers.
Those were some problems with northern internet that intervenors expressed to the Canadian telecommunications regulator at a hearing Monday on telecommunications in the North.
"It's mostly the Indigenous people who don't have [internet] services," Brenda Norris, who directs an Indigenous family internet initiative for the Native Women's Association of the NWT, told the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
"There's a certain unfairness in the fact that these communities are at least 15 years behind everyone else."
The CRTC is holding hearings in Whitehorse through the week, exploring ways to improve internet and phone services in Northern Canada.
The commission will look at, among other things, the creation of a subsidy to make the internet more affordable in the North, automatic refunds for internet outages, and how service providers engage with Indigenous communities.
"We know that everyone in Canada needs fast, affordable and reliable access to telecommunications services to participate fully in today's economy and society," CRTC chairperson and CEO Vicky Eatrides said in her opening remarks.
"One of the objectives of our proceeding is to find solutions to make Internet service in the Far North more affordable and more reliable."
Several people testified that Indigenous communities are hamstrung — economically and socially — by slow and unreliable internet connections and high prices.
It's one reason why, Norris said, internet should be provided to Indigenous families for free.
"We've taken so much from the Northwest Territories with all the resources, residential schools, you name it," she said.
"There's so much that we could do with an Internet connection," she continued. "They would take the Internet in their communities and they would make something of it., and it is the least that we can do to give it to them."
N.W.T. deputy finance minister William MacKay told the CRTC that price is the main reason why households in smaller communities don't have internet.
"This especially applies in the case of Indigenous households that have a low Internet take up rate of only 63 per cent, compared to 94 per cent for other households," he said.