Outlying communities complain to Tbaytel about service availability

Several Northwestern Ontario mayors are saying enough’s enough when it comes to the availability of wireless service in their community.

Newly elected Shunia Reeve Wendy Landry on Friday said uneven coverage outside of Thunder Bay is detrimental to her community’s ability to attract both business and residents.

Landry cited an example of a company on one side of the highway that has no service, while residents further east on the other side of the highway enjoy full mobile service.

“The frustration level is big,” Landry told Tbaytel president and CEO Dan Topatigh, who addressed the Thunder Bay District Municipal League on Friday.

The company in question tried to work with the municipally owned utility, but to date haven’t made any progress. Managers can’t even use their cell phones to contact workers elsewhere in the building, Landry said, adding the company is considering switching its 60 or so mobile plans to Bell.

“They were met with roadblocks trying to correct that and event offered to put a tower up if that would fix the problem,” Landry said.

Oliver Paipoonge Mayor Lucy Kloosterhuis said people in her community are suffering through similar problems.

“Certain parts of our municipality don’t have cell service,” Kloosterhuis said. “But even more importantly than that, certain portions of our municipality don’t have high-speed Internet. And it’s really affecting the fact that our municipality can’t see economic development.”

The problem is so bad in some areas that university students are forced to find wireless access in Thunder Bay to complete and submit their assignments, rather than being able to work from the comfort of their own home.

“We have approached the City of Thunder Bay and asked to work with them to alleviate that problem. They have said they will and we are hoping in January we can see something move forward,” Kloosterhuis said.

Topatigh said his company faces no bigger challenge than trying to decide where to place its next towers.

He did tell Landry that the example she gave has been identified as a trouble area and they are looking at placing a tower near the KOA campground or further up the Armstrong highway.

“Both of those are in our 2015 capital plan,” he said, adding they are subject to the weather and construction likely couldn’t start any earlier than April.

He acknowledged it’s an issue with no easy answer.

“We are challenged to continue to try to bring service to the far, outreaching rural areas,” he said.

Terrace Bay Coun. Jody Davis said he found a simple solution at camp, where rock cuts left him without wireless service.
“I got a booster,” he said.

“Could you not work with your customers to provide boosters or help them get boosters?”

“We do that today,” Topatigh replied.

“But as good as the spectrum is, it has a hard time penetrating steel and concrete.”

Topatigh also mentioned the city could lose a portion of its 3,500 MHz spectrum as the province realigns allocation for wireless mobile service. Should the allocation be rerouted, it could affect service south of the city to the U.S. border.

The city’s population is the main stumbling block, he said.