Not enough traffic — or speed — on Alberta's internet 'highway,' critics complain
SuperNet project a ‘massive failure,’ Red Deer County official says
With about $1 billion invested over a quarter century in the Alberta SuperNet, the province still has some of the worst rural broadband availability in Canada.
The project was well-intentioned and showed foresight but the investment has not paid off, says Michael McNally, co-chair of the Alberta Rural Connectivity Coalition's policy committee.
"We have about 40 per cent of rural homes with access to high-speed internet, and that puts [Alberta] last," said McNally, an associate professor with the University of Alberta's School of Library and Information Studies.
"In Quebec, close to 85 per cent of rural homes have high-speed."
According to 2022 statistics from the CRTC, Alberta ranks lowest among all provinces in reaching federal benchmarks for internet speed — 50 megabits per second for downloads and 10 megabits per second for uploads.
Back in 2001, the province pledged to connect rural communities to a high-speed internet "highway" network called the Alberta SuperNet, a broadband network of fibre-optic cables, wireless towers and other equipment connecting 4,200 schools, hospitals, libraries, government and municipal offices in 429 communities.
The idea was for SuperNet to act like an internet highway to connect communities, while internet service providers would build the "last mile" connections to homes or businesses, McNally said.
He and others question if the investment in the project has been worth the reward. McNally suggests the once-promising project has become an expensive failure.
McNally recently co-authored an article on the SuperNet for the digital magazine Policy Options, and spoke to CBC's Edmonton AM.
Household connections 'never materialized'
McNally said the relative lack of internet connectivity in rural Alberta is partially due to the shortcomings in how the SuperNet project was implemented.
"The thinking was [the SuperNet] was going to put us at the cutting edge of the digital economy and society. It kind of did in that early phase, but what never materialized were the smaller connections to households, especially in rural communities," he said.
"The idea, theoretically, was that SuperNet would enable small providers to build local networks and then connect through the SuperNet to Calgary and then into the main internet exchange and the global internet."
However, smaller internet service providers found connection costs were too high to use the network, he said.
"In 2018, the auditor general of Alberta said we've invested over a billion public dollars on the SuperNet … Yet, it's not clear that we're getting all of the benefits from that network."
That year, Bell Canada acquired the contract to operate the SuperNet, but McNally said he is concerned about how much money the province has spent on the project, and how little is known about the details of Bell's contract.
In the Policy Options article, McNally and co-author Gregory Taylor argue that not all of Alberta's internet challenges are related to SuperNet.
In 2022, the province launched the Alberta Broadband Fund (ABF) in partnership with the federal government's Universal Broadband Fund. The UBF was started in 2020 with the aim of connecting all Canadians to high-speed internet by 2030.
Together, the federal and provincial funds are providing money for new broadband projects in underserved areas of Alberta. Eligibility requirements for the Alberta fund are similar to those for the federal fund.
An Alberta government report on the provincial strategy in 2022 found that 67 per cent of rural Albertans and 80 per cent of Indigenous communities didn't have access to reliable high-speed internet at federal target speeds.
McNally and Taylor said in their Policy Options article that both the Alberta and federal broadband funds have shown "slow results" in getting internet to households.
An August 2024 news release from the province said that in 2021, 489,000 Albertans living in 201,000 households lacked access to internet at federal target speeds.
It said Alberta "continues to work to get more projects approved by the federal government so more households and communities have access to better connectivity."
The same release said 62 projects supported by the Universal Broadband Fund were underway in Alberta, bringing connectivity to more than 51,000 households in 328 communities.
In a statement to CBC for this story, Alberta's Ministry of Technology and Innovation said that to date, the province and the federal government have jointly invested over $370 million in 54 broadband projects in Alberta.
'A massive failure'
Red Deer County is using $10 million from the Universal Broadband Fund and another $20 million of its own money to develop its own broadband infrastructure.
The county is going its own way "so we're not beholden to the SuperNet," said assistant county manager Dave Dittrick.
"In our minds, [SuperNet] was a massive failure on the province's part."
Dittrick said the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for better rural broadband connection in his community.
He said many county residents struggled with poor internet connection for online work and schooling during the pandemic and had to find ways to adapt.
"When the pandemic hit, we had one Wi-Fi hotspot at a truck stop, and people would drive to that truck stop, and they would be doing their [online] homework in the parking lot," he said.
He said it's important that Red Deer County residents have the same level of internet access as their urban counterparts.
"We now value the internet the same as you value electricity, gas, water, and sewer. It's a needed and valuable utility, and it's not a 'nice to have,' it's a 'have to have,'" Dittrick said.
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