Community News

PROVINCE NEEDS TO ADDRESS ITS INTERNET PROBLEM

RELIABLE HIGH-SPEED INTERNET IS PARAMOUNT TO LOCAL BUSINESS, WRITES DOUG HARKNESS

Doug Harkness is the incoming chair of Dufferin Board of Trade. Reach him at doug@orangevilleprecast.ca.

When the last spike was driven in on Nov. 7, 1885 to complete the Canadian Pacific Railroad, it was the culmination of less than a decade's worth of work to complete the western portion of Canada's transcontinental railroad.

Contrast that to today to where we've already passed a decade and countless promises while we wait for what passes as high-speed internet in this country.

I have discovered while researching this column that there is actually a standard for high speed, it is download speeds of 50 Megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of 10 Mbps.

I did a speed test while I sit at my desk here on Main Street, Mono and things are moving along pretty quick with my DSL connection today.

Download speeds of 3.5 Mbps and upload speeds all the way up to .4 Mbps.

It does make for a kind of cosy atmosphere, I suppose. Rather than sharing that cool YouTube clip around the office like they do in those big city places, we gather round one desk

and hope that we can watch 10 or 15 seconds all in one spot before the buffering starts.

This isn't Grise Fiord, Nunavut or Cape Spear, N.L., but rather a business that sits about 50 kilometres as the crow flies from the economic heart of the country.

Issues such as this are commonplace throughout rural Dufferin-Caledon and worse in many.

As we move beyond COVID-19 and back to the many pressing business issues at hand, this election access to inexpensive, reliable high-speed internet is paramount to local business.

Not only is it important for our own day-to-day operations but we need our customers to have reliable broadband as well so they can access our goods and services.

If our customers can't access our websites, it's kind of like building an office without a front door.

There are of course other issues important to business as well.

Just like the general public, we are relying on our provincial government to improve pandemic preparedness so future waves or future pandemics will cause only a ripple and not more catastrophic business shutdowns.

Economic prosperity can only continue if we all have access to good health care and homes that we can afford to live in.

From the perspective of local business, there are many issues affecting us as we head into the election but none more important and easier to fix than access to reliable high-speed internet.

PROVINCIAL ELECTION OPINION

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2022-05-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://communitynews.pressreader.com/article/281539409564662

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