“There are More Low Hanging Fruits in Need of High-Speed Internet” says CRD Director

A Cariboo Regional District (CRD) Director, Margo Wagner, says there are more small communities in need of better high-speed internet.

Late in March, the Province announced that Clinton, Ruth Lake, and Deka Lake were now connected with high-speed fibre internet. The completion of these two projects marked a big step for the Cariboo’s connectivity, with now over 70 per cent of homes connected to high-speed internet across the region.

However, Electoral Area H Director Margo Wagner says there are still communities with year-round residents in need of better connectivity.

“Where I get pushed in my electoral area is the Mahood Lake area. It’s quite a long road to get there, and I don’t know whether the year-round residents will get it because of the distance of getting the fibre cables out there, with not a lot of residences that would pick up the service.”

Wagner says another area in a similar situation to Mahood Lake is Green Lake. The region has seen minor growth in year-round residents, but the majority do not have access to the fast broadband services and cell reception.

It’s not only small rural communities that are missing out; communities such as Esler Road near Williams Lake do not have access to high-speed internet as well. To Wagner, these are what she calls “low-hanging fruits” for the Province and Telus to connect with fibre.

“In a small community that’s maybe a 20-kilometre road to get there, it’s hard to get the cables there,” says Wagner. “However, you don’t drive into any country to get to Esler Road. The SPCA is up there, the big sports complex is there. It doesn’t make any sense to me that Esler is a stone’s throw from the city limits of Williams Lake, and they don’t have any high-speed internet or cell service up there.”

Wagner also noted another area within a community is the Pinkney Complex in 100 Mile House.

She says the first block of the complex, with the veterinarians’ and MLA’s office, has access to high-speed internet, whereas the other half does not.

According to Wagner, an issue with getting all the smaller and rural communities connected is the region’s terrain. With the communities in the Cariboo spread out, it is harder to dig into the rocky grounds for kilometres to put in the infrastructure. She also notes that a large focus of the Connecting British Columbia Program is connecting Indigenous communities.

The CRD is still advocating for increased connectivity for the regions’ smaller communities. In the meantime, Wagner says the rural communities will have to use satellite connection services like StarLink and ExploreNet. Wagner  is hopeful there will be a solution on how to get the infrastructure needed to connect the rest of the Cariboo soon.