Bell Aliant issued a press release today that caught my eye, announcing that it is extending fibre to the home (FTTH) service to three additional towns in Newfoundland and Labrador: Harbour Grace, Deer Lake and Stephenville.

These are some pretty small communities. Harbour Grace is a town of about 3100 people; Deer Lake is home to 5,000; Stephenville has a population of 8,000.

Bell Aliant is investing $4.8M to provide fibre optic connectivity to 8,100 homes and businesses in these 3 communities. Bell Aliant’s FTTH service, FibreOP, is available to more than 800,000 homes and businesses in more than 70 communities across Atlantic Canada and Ontario, with a target to have one million premises passed by the end of 2014.

Today’s announcement brings advanced digital infrastructure to communities that aren’t suburbs of major metropolitan areas. Harbour Grace is 100 kms from St. John’s. It is 30 kms off the Trans-Canada highway. Deer Lake is 50 kms north east from Corner Brook; Stephenville is 80 kms southwest of Corner Brook, the former home of a US air force base.

There is no government broadband program driving the investment, but there are competitive pressures at play. Eastlink offers cable-based TV, phone and internet.

Bell Aliant’s FTTH services in the province will be available to more than 139,000 premises, an investment of $65 million since 2011. At less than $600 per premises, the expansion is an interesting contrast to the costs described in my blog post from last week discussing Australia’s government-led experience to date.

A damning report on Australia’s National Broadband Network was published yesterday, citing outrageous costs per subscriber.

In his article “Australia’s failed experiment in government-owned broadband” on TechPolicyDaily.com, Jeffrey Eisenach says that Australia has made fibre available to only about 260,000 premises despite having spent AU$7.3 billion. Of those, only 78,000 subscribers have actually signed up, resulting in costs of $93,000 per subscriber.

Less than a quarter (23%) of the subscribers are signing up for fibre optic type speeds of 100Mbps/40Mbps. The rest are taking more conventional 25Mbps/5Mbps (or slower) services.

The article is an important read for those calling for government intervention into Canadian broadband markets. Recall last summer, a major union was leading a call for the government to create a crown corporation to offer communications services.

As I wrote last August, as much as Canadians love to kvetch about our communications companies, do we really want a government agency to take their place?

I had a breakfast meeting today with a colleague and a community leader joined us.

Our conversation was pretty wide ranging, including topics such as emergency preparedness, disaster recovery, cloud strategies, economic development, cell towers and more. All of this in one hour while still having enough time to enjoy kippers and bagels. Yes, we spoke with food in our mouths.

We talked about how the community agencies responded to the ice storms in late December and where the communications systems succeeded on some levels but failed to handle the peak loads of traffic from citizen calls and web traffic.

We started talking about development of a smart city strategy. I suggested that whatever overall strategy emerged, it would be important to identify bite-sized pieces. Get local citizens involved to help prioritize which bites should be nibbled first.

More than once on these pages I have said “Set clear objectives. Align activities with the achievement of those objectives. Stop doing things that are contrary to the objectives.”

A city won’t become a smart city overnight. It doesn’t have to. We don’t go to school and get programmed all at once.

But a city should get a little smarter every day. Like all of us, building a smart city should be a process requiring ‘continuing education’ and skills enhancement. It needs an evangelist to be working with community agencies and local businesses to develop a culture of digital leadership.

This could be an approach for all levels of government as we develop digital strategies.

The way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

Building a smart city means creating a culture that works to make the community a little bit smarter every day.

The federal budget indicates we are going to throw more money at the problem of universal broadband. Under the heading of “Consumers First”, the government promises to spend “$305 million over five years to extend and enhance broadband internet service for Canadians in rural and Northern communities.”

It is a politically attractive move to spend money in rural and remote markets. There will be a series of media events with grateful local dignitaries and telegenic kids receiving an oversized ceremonial cheque to urge a single service provider to extend the reach of its network.

It is the wrong approach.

Subsidies to a single service provider means the government is put in the position of picking a winner, virtually guaranteeing the end of competitive choice in the communities. One service provider ends up operating with its business plan subsidized, distorting the marketplace for the entire region, not just the “unserved” territory. The same page of the budget website includes a section that speaks of “Improving Competition in the Telecommunications Market”. The rural broadband approach represents a disconnect from the national telecommunications strategy. Why should rural markets have to settle for a monopoly service provider?

In the meantime, there is no mention of dealing with the lack of connectivity among low income households in urban markets. The Survey of Household Spending from Statistics Canada tells us that 1 in 6 households in Canada still has no personal computer, let alone internet access.

Building a Digital Canada means we have to look at both sides of the broadband adoption equation, finding solutions to increase demand as well as the supply of access. A few years ago, publicly available data showed that there were 300,000 households in Montreal that didn’t have a computer, despite having lots of broadband choices available. More than 200,000 households in Toronto; 100,000 households in Vancouver. As you might expect, computer ownership and broadband access is highly correlated with household income.

Increasing digital connectivity means finding solutions for affordability, targeting those who can’t afford the cost of getting online, regardless of where they live.

The CRTC undertook a study of broadband and released a Broadband Report in November 2011. At the time, it said “The purpose of this report is to establish a baseline from which to assess the progress that is being made in achieving this target.”

It has now been two and a half years since the “baseline” was established. Before the government spends nearly a third of a billion dollars, it might be helpful to see an update to “assess the progress.”

As I wrote at the time the CRTC Broadband Report was released, we need a digital strategy “that promotes digital literacy and leads to computers getting into Canada’s low income households. We have the plumbing in place: we need to lead more Canadians to the well and teach them how to drink.”

I noticed an interesting tweet yesterday from SAP:

My immediate response was to ask “The future?” We shouldn’t be waiting for “the future.” The time to be more customer-centric is “now.”

In the services business, especially in a competitive services business, it seems to me that the industry focus already is all about the customer. At least it should be.

Those companies that can excell at tailoring a suite of products for their customers and delivering a superior customer experience will be the winners.

As SAP asked, what are you doing to be more customer-centric?

We have a session scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, June 17 at The 2014 Canadian Telecom Summit looking at Customer Experience Management.

Early bird rates are still available for The Canadian Telecom Summit, through Friday. Register today!