The Town of Turner Valley is hiring a consultant to help determine the best way to bring high-speed Internet to the community.
Turner Valley Town council voted on May 17 to hire Taylor Warwick Consulting of Sherwood Park to draft a business case that will provide details on alternatives to providing fibre optics to the town’s residences and businesses. The project is estimated to cost $11,000.
“For us to make a decision we need all the information in front of us to make the best decision on behalf of our community,” said Coun. Dona Fluter at last month’s meeting.
Warwick’s consulting company has created business cases for other municipalities and is working with the Calgary Regional Partnership (CRP) to evaluate options to enhance the availability and quality of broadband services across the region.
“This is a body to suggest what are all the options and what should we be looking at,” said Barry Williamson, chief administrative officer. “While that’s going on we have third parties interested in this. Where you land on this business case might suggest you are better off going with a third party provider.”
Black Diamond council rejected splitting the cost of the project with Turner Valley in April, saying it has the information it needs to make its own decision on broadband.
Turner Valley officials then approached the CRP to help finance the study. The group agreed to contribute $5,000, leaving Turner Valley to cover the remaining $6,000.
The Internet in Black Diamond and Turner Valley operates on wire cables and in recent years both Towns have been discussing switching to fibre optics, which carries data over longer distances and at higher bandwidths. Signals travel with less loss and are immune to electromagnetic interference.
Turner Valley Mayor Kelly Tuck said it’s important to have a business case behind the information before deciding how fibre optics will be available to the community, such as the Town providing the service or it being done through a third party.
“I think in our little urban-rural areas the Internet is very slow and I think people want to be able to decide how it looks -- who their Internet provider will be and where they are able to stream,” she said. “I think the biggest thing is what’s the cost behind it.”
Tuck said the Town needs to get moving on providing high-speed Internet to residents and businesses.
With basic Internet service, Tuck’s own Internet is slow and she can’t imagine how businesses are faring.
“There are days where I feel like I just can’t get on there,” she said. “There has definitely been on social media an outcry for broadband. We’ve definitely seen it over the last year.”
Tuck expects to see the results of the business case come back to council in a month and would like to see action soon after that.
“I would hope it would be immediate to be able to move forward as soon as possible,” she said. “There’s more players out here that are wanting to look at bringing broadband to the community and council is prepared to look at each and every one of them.”
