High-speed internet in rural Nova Scotia to get $6.5M Eastlink funding boost

Eastlink plans to spend millions of dollars in the next year to upgrade internet services for thousands of customers in rural Nova Scotia, but some residents say that's still not enough.

The company will spend $5.5 million to bring fibre-based high-speed access to 4,500 customers in West Pubnico, Guysborough, Inverness, Mabou, Judique, Port Hood and Port Hastings within the next six to 12 months.

Those communities will have access to internet speeds of up to 940 Mbps at prices similar to other communities in the province that already have the service, Eastlink CEO Lee Bragg said Thursday.

Money for upgrades

Bragg said an additional $1 million will be spent on upgrading 1,000 existing customers in other parts of Nova Scotia to a higher speed broadband service.

Internet speeds in those communities — including Kemptville, Greenfield and Margaretsville — will be five to 10 Mbps.

Susan Perry and her husband, who live in Greenfield, say their current internet speed is about 0.84 Mbps through Eastlink's broadband service. It takes her least one minute to open a website.

"If you want to go to your email, it's another two minute wait. If it's between four o'clock and eight at night, might as well forget it," she said.

'Not that much of an improvement'

Perry said children in the community — which has less than 1,000 residents — have to travel 25 minutes to Liverpool or Bridgewater to access the free Wi-Fi at the mall in order to do their homework. 

She said the upgrade won't be enough.

"It will be an improvement, but not that much of an improvement."

Bragg said it comes down to economics. 

"It's challenging where you get these areas where there are very few people that live and you need to deploy a lot of money to service them," said Bragg.

"So sometimes it just doesn't make sense unless there's something else that changes."

'It really became just a ranking exercise'

Bragg said in Inverness, the development of the Cabot Links golf course made it more financially viable for the company to offer high-speed internet to residents there.

"It really became just a ranking exercise on what communities had the most density, the most customers for the given amount of dollars it was going to take to provide the service," said Bragg.

Tom Bond, a seasonal resident of Ecum Secum on the Eastern Shore, just got internet access via satellite. He criticized the company's decision to upgrade its service in existing communities instead of bringing it to areas without service, like his own.

'Areas that are forgotten'

"I don't think it's going to reach the right areas. There are areas that are forgotten," he said.

"In light of the fact that those communities that they are going into have other opportunities to engage with the internet, what about the communities that don't?"

The $6.5 million will be spent entirely by Eastlink, not the province of Nova Scotia.

Painfully slow internet 

Many rural Nova Scotians have had to deal with painfully slow internet access for years.

In 2006, Premier Rodney MacDonald promised all Nova Scotians would have access to broadband internet by 2010. But that didn't happen.

A 2007 study determined around 93,500 Nova Scotians were without access to broadband internet. That number is now down to an estimated 1,000 customers, while another 20,000 to 40,000 are "underserved."

The CRTC considers anyone with internet speeds lower than five Mbps to be underserved.

In this year's provincial budget, $6 million was announced for work to improve rural internet access. 

The province released a new report in June which assessed the state of rural internet in Nova Scotia, saying it's time to trade analysis for action.