By K. K. Campbell

Alberta is out to out-do Ontario.

No provincial sales tax. Heritage fund surplus. No less than two recent dominant hockey teams. And now it’s targeting Ontario’s high-tech business hubs.

The first step in Alberta’s plan? Get just about every citizen—from farmer to financier—hooked up with broadband ’net access through a plan called the Alberta SuperNet.

Within three years, the government expects SuperNet to provide high-speed connections to all communities that have a hospital, school, library or provincial government office. That adds up to 422 communities and 4,700 facilities, leaving out only a small percentage of citizens.

Canada’s oil province is the first North American jurisdiction to bestow the gift of affordable bandwidth on its people. The economic benefit formula is simple: if Internet speed increases and connection costs drop then more people will use the Web and e-mail, which should result in innovative, Info-Age economic ideas and community leadership.

Alberta science minister Victor Doerksen is banking on SuperNet to improve information services and supercharge the Internet’s “Big Es”—e-commerce, egovernment, e-health and e-learning.

SuperNet has been compared to other ambitious government programs of the last century: universal literacy, the electrification of rural farms and the creation of highway networks. The societies affected always came away richer.

Doerksen said the government isn’t “taking over” the broadband business from the private sector. “In areas where the private sector has already gone in, and competition exists, the government has no need to put fibre in the ground—so we aren’t. The real impact of SuperNet will be felt in the communities where the private sector is simply unable to make a business case to build.”

Alberta also aims to attract technology businesses and form “high-tech business clusters” like those in Ontario
(Toronto, Ottawa and Kitchener-Waterloo).

Of course, Ontario’s hubs possess other essential factors for business development: Toronto is a financial and political capital, Ottawa is the seat of federal government and Kitchener-Waterloo is, well, down the highway from Toronto. Another critical factor in long-term, high-tech cluster development is proximity to powerful academic/research institutions. It’s no coincidence U.S. clusters are found in academic bastions like Massachusetts, California and New York.

Showing the money
To build a provincial broadband network, first you need money. Fortunately, Alberta has lots of that. SuperNet will consume $295 million in capital expenditures.

A primary hard cost is laying fibre-optic cable. It’s a labour intensive job, and can’t be replaced by wireless systems. A wireless phone is really a local device that connects to the nearest signal tower.The towers are connected through fibre.

SuperNet’s private sector partners Bell Intrigna and Bell Nexxia will ante up $102 million to upgrade 27 communities in a region designated as the Base Area, which already has some high-speed connections. The government will invest $193 million in the Extended Area—395 new communities not well served by the private sector.

The private sector also gets further project involvement perks: Alberta’s government has promised to assign half its expected telecommunications expenditures for the next decade to Bell Intrigna. That should total $169 million in revenues.

Economic benefits
The most obvious benefit of this project is speed. High-priority users—4,700 hospitals, school libraries and provincial government
offices—will have access to pages at the rate of 500 per second. Other Albertans—business and consumers—should hit 50 pages per second.

While SuperNet won’t directly connect businesses, it will lower costs by helping the Internet service providers (ISPs) that connect companies. The new arrangement gives rural businesses a more level playing field by evening out access costs. Currently, some rural Alberta companies pay $2,000 a month for 1.5 Mbps service.

Once SuperNet is implemented, high-speed access will cost about the same regardless of where a business is located.

The Alberta government anticipates this liberation from distance-based pricing will give business more choice in planning processes. For example, firms could avoid high urban rents because cities will no longer monopolize broadband.

Smaller Alberta municipalities understand the local benefits to business. “It’s the future, an opportunity to move to a knowledge-based economy which will exist throughout Alberta,” said Lorne Olsevik, president of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association.

Gail Surkan, mayor of Red Deer, said central Alberta will benefit enormously. “We’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.We see it as not only connecting our community but the communities of our region.We in central Alberta are ready to implement a number of initiatives which will show the real value of being connected.”

SuperNet won’t directly connect individual homes, but the government said all Albertans will have at least one local service provider to offer high-speed access over phone lines or television cable at low urban rates—whether they live in Calgary, Peace River or Oyen.

Healthier societies
With broader ’net access also comes the ability to cut health care costs. Individuals will be able to reduce visits to their family doctor by taking on simple, low-skill health-related information tasks themselves.

The Alberta health care system will gain functions like real-time remote ultrasounds, a pharmaceutical information network, instant health records transfer, telehealth learning and even telepsychiatry.

“Information is one of the keys to the health system of the 21st century,” said Sheila Weatherill, president and CEO of Alberta’s Capital Health Authority.

She said the SuperNet will help nascent telehealth programs by “enhancing access to specialist expertise for patients and health-care providers in smaller centres across central and northern Alberta. It will help improve coordination of all our services with other Health Regions.”

Other provinces
Alberta is rich, so there’s no surprise it’s the first to take a swing at a SuperNet.

Ontario, too, has the resources, but its larger population makes for a massive project. The province is watching the Alberta experiment.

Saskatchewan has implemented CommunityNet, which will bring high-speed access to government organizations in 366 communities. But there are no plans to extend this to ISPs, so businesses and consumers will not directly benefit.

Manitoba has announced a plan for a Community Connections project. Like SuperNet, it will bring broadband to any community with a hospital, school, library or government office.

Regardless of the economic competition SuperNet brings, there’s one thing Canadians can bank on: increased Albertan presence in the online world.

Web high - speed
Alberta’s SuperNet http://www.innovation.gov.ab.ca/supernet
Manitoba’s Community Connections http://www.gov.mb.ca/itm/strategy.html
Saskatchewan’s CommunityNet http://www.communitynet.ca/intro.html