Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - A recent study suggests that incorrect reporting may be responsible for Southern Quadra Island, Tahsis, Gold River and Sayward not qualifying for funding under the Connected Coast High Speed internet program. As a result of this failure, the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) had to arrange for loans of up to $12.5 million. BC’s Ministry of Citizens' Services, the Union of BC Municipalities and the Northern Development Initiative Trust hired TANEx Engineering to study reports that the amount of broad service available in rural communities is less than what servers like TELUS, Mascon Cable Services (a TELUS company) and Bell are reporting on the National Broadband Internet Service Availability Map.

According to a summary of the findings, released by the Ministry, ‘there was medium to high evidence of possible discrepancies in 106’ of the 940 localities studied.

The SRD Board appears to have discussed this matter in the closed session of their Feb 23 Board meeting. A link to the summary of findings was in the minutes of that meeting. The SRD declined Cortes Currents subsequent request for an interview.

However some of the Directors have discussed the reporting problem at previous Board meetings.

According to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), “Canadian residential and business fixed broadband Internet access service subscribers should be able to access speeds of at least 50 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 10 Mbps upload.”

The services in Southern Quadra Island, Tahsis, Gold River and Sayward were all reported to have met that standard.

However Tahsis is also one of the six communities that TANEx chose for case studies:

“Tahsis reports poor internet, does not appear to have 50/10 service available for purchase, and there are no CIRA tests within the municipality that reflect service at 50/10. This provides further evidence of a difference in what the Map shows and what the community is experiencing.“

At the March 24, 2021, Board meeting, Mayor Martin Davis of Tahsis remarked, “I find it really disingenuous that they're throwing these numbers around about 50 down and 10 up for Tahsis because, well, I just did a test on mine and it's 6 down and 3 up. I've talked to many people in the community around these tests and that's typical. So I really don't know where the data's coming from and I believe it's incorrect. So I'm glad to see that they're looking into it.”

Mayor Brad Unger of Gold River agreed, “Same thing happening in Gold River.”

Regional Director Jim Abram reported the results of Quadra Island’s speed tests at the April 28th Board meeting, “200 or some odd people had to do speed tests and screenshots of what kind of service they were getting from TELUS, because TELUS had given the government information that was not quite correct, that we were covered to a degree of 50 megabits down, 10 megabits up on our internet speeds that is untrue and we proved it with our screenshots. The highest one we had was 38! Most of them were down in the 10s. So that in itself cut out a huge amount of our funding for the Connected Coast, which we're all involved and we just passed a huge motion to borrow a bunch of money!”

TANEx found that 50/10 can mean very different things for customers logging on to their hosting network and a service provider who is only accessing the Canadian Internet Exchange. Connection speeds can degrade as information passes through more parties. So what the provider experiences as 50/10, can be much slower for customers.

In theory, providers should deliver the connection speeds they advertise, but there is also a wide range of factors that are regarded as outside the control of the network provider.