{"id":15171,"date":"2021-06-09T06:00:52","date_gmt":"2021-06-09T10:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mhgoldberg.com\/blog\/?p=15171"},"modified":"2021-06-07T16:31:07","modified_gmt":"2021-06-07T20:31:07","slug":"the-ongoing-challenge-of-rural-broadband","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mhgoldberg.com\/blog\/?p=15171","title":{"rendered":"The ongoing challenge of rural broadband"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, I learned about High Speed Crow<\/a>, a rural Manitoba broadband provider that has been around since 2003 and laying fibre since 2015. <\/p>\n

Haven’t heard of them? Well, neither had I.<\/p>\n

In truth, the company should have been on my radar screen; High Speed Crow received federal funding<\/a> for a rural broadband project 2 years ago. <\/p>\n

What I found notable last week was the fibre to the home pricing on its website<\/a>: $250 per month for symmetric 1 Gbps service. That is a hefty price to pay, but I have no doubt that it is a fair price given the cost of building fibre in rural communities. <\/p>\n

For comparison purposes, I took a look at prices for fibre to the home service in Winnipeg. Bell MTS charges $139.95 for 1.5 Gbps service, or $110 per month for symmetric gigabit per second service. But keep in mind, that pricing is for an urban setting. <\/p>\n

The pricing differential helps highlight one of the challenges of expanding service to rural markets. <\/p>\n

If we can assume that a smaller company like High Speed Crow is charging a price that fairly reflects the cost of it providing service, it isn’t hard to imagine that Bell MTS could do so for roughly the same cost. The overhead costs may be different, and likely the cost of materials may be a little lower due to differences in scale, but it is very unlikely that Bell MTS could have costs that are half of those costs for High Speed Crow. So comparing the prices may be a kind of proxy for comparing the costs in urban versus rural Manitoba.<\/p>\n

So, if Bell MTS had tried to offer fibre to the home service in those areas, it would be impossible for the company to offer urban pricing – less than half what is being charged by High Speed Crow. It isn’t hard to imagine the fallout that would arise if a major service provider had differential pricing that offers urban residents service for less than half the price of that offered to people in rural areas. <\/p>\n

These kinds of dramatic cost differentials bring to mind numerous questions, such as:<\/p>\n