On the heels of a recent ruling by the CRTC, a rural Thunder Bay woman is waiting to hear if Tbaytel will provide high-speed Internet service in her area in the near future.
Sabrina Ree and other residents of her neighbourhood on Mud Lake Road in Murillo have been lobbying Tbaytel for over nine years to provide them with high-speed web service.
The CRTC — the federal telecommunications regulator— recently declared that everyone in Canada should have access to high-speed Internet. It has established targets for speeds and will set up a new fund to expand broadband service in remote parts of the country.
After the ruling, Ree tried to contact Tbaytel to get an update on its plans for her area but she has yet to hear back.
She calls the situation in her area "really frustrating," noting that her 3-year-old daughter Keyanna will go to school next fall without the full benefit of the Internet as a learning tool at home.
"She has a tablet of her own that she just got for Christmas...and she can't even watch 'The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round' (on YouTube) without having interruptions because we have terrible internet."
Ree's home is situated on a 1.5-kilometre section of Mud Lake Road that falls into an Internet dead zone. The family subscribes to a rural broadband provider, but the service is slow, so Ree often relies on the data network on her smartphone.
She said from 12 to 15 other homes on the same stretch of road are also affected by the problem.
Tbnewswatch.com was unable to reach a Tbaytel spokesperson for comment, but in 2014 Tbaytel's corporate brand communication manager Katie Crowe said "We do understand that high-speed Internet is becoming something that's essential in our daily lives, so that is why it's something that's always on our radar, to see where those gaps exist and to see what we can do to bring service to those areas that are under-serviced."
In that same interview, Crowe said both geographic and financial challenges mean that it will take some time to fill service gaps in rural areas. Two years later, Ree said, "We still don't have answers...and we're told we're supposed to get this Internet, and it's not happening."
"My 3-year-old goes to school next September," she added, "and all of her peers...can do all their educational games online...It's really frustrating because we're not very far away from them and yet my daughter can't have that."
Ree said she's hoping for another meeting with Tbaytel in the new year.
