Town explores creating high-speed Internet access for residents

View Royal is considering its role in the Internet economy.

The View Royal fibre optic task force is recommending the Town own an open fibre optic network for the benefit of its citizens.

A proposal should be seen by council before year’s end, said task force member Garth Graham. The notion of an open network is new to Canada, he said, and especially new for a municipality.

“The prime reason to look at owning an open network is it’s still many years away from (current service providers) offering those broadband services,” Graham said. “But you can do it yourself.”

If approved, such a service would give residents equal access to commercial-level Internet speed in their homes. There are benefits there for anyone who operates an online business or uses the Internet to stream a lot of information, Graham said.

“Part of our endeavors (as council) of course is ... to respond to an awareness that businesses are becoming more and more decentralized,” said Mayor Graham Hill. “(We also need to) look down the wire and think about the advantages ... of having fibre in the ground.”

Several Canadian municipalities with fibre optic networks sell wholesale access to it for businesses and organizations. The View Royal task force is proposing to go one step further by selling that service to residents on an individual basis, creating a new revenue source for the Town.

As a municipal utility, the network would provide fast Internet access that was able to accommodate evolving technology demands, Graham said. A network would also allow users to pick and choose their service provider as the market would be opened globally.

“You could mix and match whatever you wanted to get what you wanted from where you wanted it,” Graham said.

Under the proposed structure View Royal would own the fibre optic cable and the underground conduit it travels through. The Town is preparing for such a step up by including a conduit in the Island Highway overhaul, which is slated to start in 2010.

“Once you have the trenches open in the ground, it’s fairly low cost to begin to put fibre in,” Hill said.

If and when fibre optic cable was installed there, the line could connect to the Victoria Transit Exchange through several routes — including the E&N rail trail. The transit exchange has nothing to do with buses, rather it houses the Internet backbone that connects across Canada, said Town director of engineering Emmet McCusker.

“It opens up the competition so now we don’t just have two service providers,” McCusker said.

View Royal isn’t the only community looking into fibre optics. Yet to be discussed by council, Mayor Dave Saunders is also researching what it would mean to operate a fibre optic utility.

“It will make it more cost affordable to our citizens,” Saunders said. “Fibre optics is the way to go. I think the City should control it.”

The hope is to form a committee of interested West Shore municipalities to discuss the idea, Saunders said. If the project moves forward, the View Royal group is looking to host a workshop or information session.

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