Alternative Internet Networks in Alberta

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2021-01-15 Public good, private providers?: Alternative internet networks in Alberta

Anderson, Katelyn M.

Anderson, K. M. (2021). Public good, private providers?: Alternative internet networks in Alberta (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/113050 master thesis

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Public good, private providers?: Alternative internet networks in Alberta

Katelyn M Anderson

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA STUDIES

CALGARY, ALBERTA

JANUARY, 2021

Abstract

Despite high-speed broadband access being named a basic service by the Canadian Radio- television and Telecommunications Commission in late 2016, many Canadians remain cut off from the internet, unable to participate in the social, economic, and political facets of life that have increasingly moved online. This research project considers existing alternative internet network models in Alberta. Instead of waiting for incumbent internet service providers to solve the problem of universal access, several Albertan communities have taken steps to connect themselves. Twenty years after the inception of the provincial internet backbone, the SuperNet, how have Albertan communities engaged with internet infrastructure? As politicians, regulators, and citizens increasingly state the essential nature of high-quality, affordable internet service as a public good, what lessons, if any, can be learned from the different ways non-incumbent operators conceptualize, build, and operate alternative networks? Using qualitative interviews, policy documents, and marketing materials, I focus on three network models: a fixed wireless access network in a rural community, a non-profit internet exchange, and a municipally owned and operated fibre network in an urban centre. Drawing upon political economy of communications literature as a theoretical framework, I consider what policy recommendations can be made based on these case studies.

Preface

This thesis is the original, independent work of the author, K. M. Anderson.

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, thank you to my supervisor, Dr. Gregory Taylor. Your guidance, encouragement, and patience helped to make this fun, and your enthusiasm for the work you do is contagious; thank you.

To my committee, Dr. Maria Bakardjieva and Dr. Rob McMahon, thank you for reading my work, and for your encouragement and thoughtfulness throughout my M.A.

Thank you to the faculty in the Communications, Media, and Film Studies department at the

University of Calgary, as well as to all the staff, especially Megan Freeman.

To all the scholars, advocates, and network builders I cite throughout these pages, especially

David Basto, Theo de Raadt, and Don McLeod: I count myself lucky to have engaged with your work. Thank you for helping to grow my imagination.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge the many other dozens of people who have invested their time and energy in helping me learn, even when no one was watching, and who granted me flexibility, even when it made their lives a little harder: May I remember your grace and pass it forward.

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List of Abbreviations

5G – Fifth Generation AGT – Alberta Government Telephone Co. AS – Autonomous System BCE – Bell Canada Enterprises BTLR – Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review CCN – Calgary City Net CDN – Content Delivery Network CMCR – Canadian Media Concentration Research CMR – Communications Monitoring Report CRTC – Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission DNS – Domain Name Server FCC – Federal Communications Commission GB – Gigabyte ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ICT – Information and Communication Technology IHAC – The Information Highway Advisory Council IP – Internet Protocol ISP – Internet service provider ISED – Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada ITU – International Telecommunications Union IXP – Internet Exchange Point LoRaWAN – Long-Range Wide Area Network Mbps – Megabits per second MPLS – Multiprotocol Label Switching NBTF – National Broadband Task Force NREN – National Research and Education Network OECD – Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development PEC – Political Economy of Communication RoW – Rights-of-Way YYCIX – Calgary Internet Exchange

List of Figures and Table

Figure 1: Map of Alberta’s SuperNet (Service of Alberta, n.d.) Figure 2: Town of Viking Internet Service current and planned towers. (Town of Viking, 2020) Figure 3: Town of Viking Internet Service speeds, about 500 metres from the grain elevator, as of November 11, 2020. (McLeod, 2020) Figure 4: YYCIX network map, as of early 2020. (YYCIXd, 2020) Figure 5: YYCIX network map, showing future additions in progress. (YYCIXd, 2020)

Figure 6: City of Calgary’s past and current revenues from city-owned fibre infrastructure. (City of Calgary, 2020c)

Table 1: Methodological Framework

Table 2: Timeline of City of Calgary’s fibre infrastructure. (Basto, 2020; City of Calgary, 2015, 2018, 2020c)

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... i Preface...... ii Acknowledgements ...... iii List of Abbreviations ...... iv List of Figures and Table ...... v Table of Contents ...... vi Introduction ...... 1 Introduction ...... 1 Structure of Research Project ...... 4 Literature Review ...... 4 Methodology ...... 4 Theory ...... 4 Case Studies ...... 6 Setting Up the Discussion ...... 8 Who Has Access: Geographical differences ...... 8 Who Has Access: Income Differences ...... 9 Who Has Control: The State of Competition in Canada ...... 10 Conclusion ...... 11 Literature Review...... 13 Introduction ...... 13 Defining ‘Access’ ...... 13 ‘Access for What Purposes?’ ...... 15 ‘Access for Whom, and to What?’ ...... 16 Is Access Enough?: From Digital Divides to the Data Divide ...... 18 Scholarship on Municipal Broadband ...... 21 Conclusion ...... 25 Methodology ...... 27 Introduction ...... 27 Methodology Used ...... 27 Case Studies Chosen ...... 28

Primary Documents ...... 29 Federal Data and Reports ...... 29 CRTC Documents and Canadian Industry Reports ...... 30 Reports from Outside Canada...... 32 Provincial Data ...... 32 Primary Documents for Case Study 1: Viking, AB...... 33 Primary documents from Case Study 2: YYCIX ...... 34 Primary documents for Case Study 3: City of Calgary ...... 34 Straight to the Source: Interviews with Network Creators and Administrators ...... 36 A Framework of Analysis ...... 38 Methodological Limitations: Whose Voices Were Included ...... 39 Conclusion ...... 42 Theory ...... 44 Introduction ...... 44 Political Economy ...... 45 Political Economy of Communication ...... 46 Political Economy of Communication: A Framework of Ideas ...... 50 Monopoly Capital School, The Public Good, and Praxis ...... 53 ‘Political Problem, Political Solutions’ ...... 55 Conclusion ...... 59 Praxis Through Policy...... 60 Rejecting ‘Is-ism’ ...... 60 ‘It Is Not Enough to Write Books" ...... 61 Scholarly Policy Participation: Contemporary Canadian Examples ...... 63 Conclusion ...... 68 The Alberta Advantage? ...... 69 Introduction ...... 69 Provincial Backbone: Alberta SuperNet ...... 70 Albertan Community Networks: The Success of Olds ...... 75 Alberta’s History with Public Telecom: Alberta Government Telephones ...... 76 Case Study: Viking ...... 78 Introduction ...... 78

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Town of Viking Internet Service ...... 79 Service in the Community ...... 84 Conclusion ...... 86 Case Study: Calgary Internet Exchange ...... 88 Introduction ...... 88 What is an Internet Exchange? ...... 88 Benefits of IXPs ...... 90 Challenges to IXPs ...... 93 Calgary’s IXP ...... 94 COVID-19 Impact and the Future of the IXP ...... 99 Conclusion ...... 101 Case study: City of Calgary Network ...... 102 Introduction ...... 102 Beginnings of the Network ...... 103 SuperNet In the City? ...... 107 Network 2.0: The Launch...... 108 Network 2.0: The Internal Fibre Network ...... 111 Calgary’s Wholesale Dark Fibre Network ...... 112 City Hall’s Fibre Infrastructure Policy ...... 113 The Future: The ‘Smart’ City, IoT, and 5G ...... 115 The City as Policy Advocate ...... 119 Benefit to Citizens ...... 122 Conclusion ...... 123 Policy Recommendations...... 125 Introduction ...... 125 Federal ...... 125 Increase Citizen and Non-Industry Engagement in Policy Processes ...... 125 National Broadband Strategies ...... 127 Public Dollars for Public Good: Fund Universal Access ...... 129 Provincial ...... 130 Support Rural Municipalities...... 130 Urban Municipalities: The City of Calgary ...... 131

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Fund the Fibre Infrastructure Strategy...... 131 Expand the Wholesale Network ...... 132 Measure the Affordability Digital Divide ...... 132 Expand the Public Wi-Fi Network ...... 133 Launch a Municipal Internet Service Provider ...... 134 Urban Municipalities: Canadian Cities ...... 136 Engage in Provincial, Federal Policy Making ...... 136 Support Public Internet Exchanges ...... 138 Conclusion ...... 139 References ...... 143 Appendix ...... 177

Introduction

With the heralded arrival of 5G — the next generation of wireless technology that promises to connect consumer goods to the internet, everything from self-driving cars to refrigerators that can order their own milk — it can be easy to forget that many people lack even basic access to the internet. In fact, as of 2020 “half the world is not online” (UN Broadband

Commission, 2020), that is 3.6 billion people that remain unconnected (International

Telecommunications Union, 2020). In Canada, only 39% of rural residents have access to high- speed Internet, as opposed to 96% of their counterparts in urban centres (Auditor General of

Canada, 2018). Yet the ‘digital divide’ is not only a problem of geography. Where physical infrastructure is in place barriers to access still exist, primarily through the high costs of service, impacting already marginalized communities (CRTC, 2020a). Both the geographic and affordability digital divides mean that while many Canadians have internalized constant connectivity, to the point where a ‘digital detox’ is a sign of affluence – there is “no disconnectivity without connectivity” (Hesselberth, 2018) – the absence of access to affordable, reliable internet service is further leaving already vulnerable citizens behind, cutting them off from the obligations and opportunities afforded by connection.

The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the effect of these digital divides as Canadians increasingly shifted aspects of their lives online. While the sharp curtailing of the ability to interact ‘in real life’ was devastating to many, individuals and families without the internet have

not been able to leverage what has been a lifeline for so many. The digitally disconnected are liable to lose out on work and education responsibilities and opportunities, to have a harder time accessing health care and information, government, and social services, and are at increased risk of isolation as the internet has become the primary way to connect with friends, family, and peers during this unprecedented time. While the risks and associated realities of the COVID-19 pandemic will eventually subside as vaccines become widely available, it may not be the last time life is digitally mediated to this extent. Some experts, including Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease specialist in the United States, and his colleague at the National Institute of

Allergy and Infectious Diseases, David Morens, predict that COVID-19 “is but the latest example of an unexpected, novel, and devastating pandemic disease. One can conclude from this recent experience that we have entered a pandemic era” (Morens & Fauci, 2020, p. 1077). While the threat of a future pandemic(s) raises the stakes, with or without a health crisis it is clear that being unable to access the internet can be debilitating to one’s economic, educational, social, and political life (Blanton, 2013; Haight et al., 2014).

In this project, my “object of analysis” (Winseck, 2011, p. 3) is network media, specifically alternative internet networks. I engage with three case studies in order to answer the central question of this thesis: Are alternatives to commercial, corporate internet networks possible?

Using a political economy of communication (PEC) framework, I analyze the broader context these networks exist within, through looking at telecommunication policy processes. Following in the tradition of PEC, I employ a normative approach to the way the world ‘should’ be based on the research presented, and in a nod to the importance of action and intervention, I conclude with policy recommendations.

The original research done for this project explores a route to bridging geographic and economic digital divides: Municipalities and citizens that build and operate their own internet infrastructure, offering alternatives to networks dominated by the incumbents that dominate

Canada’s telecommunications market. I focus on three different models of community networks in Alberta including the Town of Viking Internet Service, the Calgary Internet Exchange Point, and the City of Calgary’s wholesale network. The heart of this research is conversations with the creators of these networks, which allowed me the opportunity to better understand how the services were imagined and implemented, and how they currently operate. The three chosen case studies are in Alberta, whose provincial telecommunications architecture is unique in the country

(Alberta Municipal Affairs, 2020). In addition, I discuss regulation and policy needed to achieve universal internet access through a national lens, as telecommunication legislation is the jurisdiction of the federal government.

Drawing from existing literature as well as evidence from the three case studies provided,

I argue that communication policy mediates interactions within and between citizens and the political, economic, and social structures they exist within. The conditions in which network communication infrastructures operate are impacted by systematic factors including capitalism, power relations, and the vibrancy of democracy and the ‘public sphere.’ Within the context of this thesis, I consider how to create policy that foregrounds the public interest is possible, and creates the conditions needed to facilitate universal access to the internet. Taking to heart the advice of foundational Canadian political economy of communications researchers, William H.

Melody and Robin Mansell, that “the first step for any policy researcher must be to examine the structure of power relations” (1983, p. 112), I analyze how current policies came about, who

participated in creating them, as well as the outcomes of those policies on the creation of alternative telecommunication infrastructures, including those owned by municipalities.

Structure of Research Project

Literature Review

To ground this research project, I survey existing literature on what is meant by ‘access’ to the internet, drawing primarily from Canadian communication scholars. I look to academics from Canada and the United States to gauge the impact of policy, and for relevant aspects of communications history and policy research. Drawing from contemporary researchers, I review recommendations for communication regulations to maximize the public interest, as well as barriers to participation in public policy processes. Finally, I review some of the current literature on municipal and community broadband networks in North America.

Methodology

The methodology chapter is an insight into why I chose to do a qualitative analysis, focussing on interviews and public documents. For each network, I conducted interviews with a key person familiar with how they built and operate their existing infrastructure, as well as analyzing data from publicly available documents from each, including the Town of Viking’s publicly available website and town council meeting minutes, the City of Calgary’s fibre network public-facing documents on their website, as well as their participation in public policy processes, and finally on data available about YYCIX, Calgary’s public internet exchange.

Theory

The PEC approach to communication scholarship is concerned not just with media and communications technologies but how they interact with broader socioeconomic structures

(Babe, 1990; Mosco, 1996; Winseck, 2011, 2016; McChesney, 2013). I was drawn to study community networks as I see them being a potential avenue to a more robust democracy. The network media industries, which includes internet service providers, make up a large percentage of the communication industry. As of 2016, these industries’ revenues were “nearly three times those of the media content sectors,” leading to a world “where bandwidth is king, not content”

(Winseck, 2016, p. 98). By gaining an understanding of how power relations function within a society, through the lens of alternative networks, there is an opportunity to reimagine existing structures. While the case studies chosen are unique, they offer insights into how citizens are working to engage with the communication infrastructure that is central to their lives, both through its ubiquity and its absence. The question of if internet infrastructures can be restructured in a way that creates a more just society is important not only for universal access advocates, but “for those who have paid little attention to internet policies but are deeply concerned about injustice, poverty, inequality, and corruption” (McChesney, 2013, p. 222). As many PEC scholars maintain, communication structures are of central importance to citizen’s lived experiences. Critical media scholar Robert McChesney’s assertion that “if one challenges the prerogatives of internet giants […] one is challenging the dominant component of really existing capitalism” (2013, p. 222) is apt for this work.

Another facet of PEC is the commitment not just to scholarship but to praxis. Throughout the literature collected here there is the rejection of technological determinism in favour of an ontology that our sociotechnical systems are imagined, built, and maintained by human actors

(Babe, 1990; Mosco, 1996; Winseck, 2011, 2016; McChesney, 2004, 2013). It is not a foregone conclusion that the world must be the way that is currently, citizens have avenues to create more just, equitable, and fair societies. With that admission comes the responsibility to engage directly

within the system. If change is desired, it requires action. Within the context of universal, affordable access to the internet, that action can take the form of, for example, creating alternative networks, or through engagement with government policy. I also look to the work of researchers who not only question their assumptions about the world through the rigorous process of scholarship, but for whom action is a part of that scholarship (Geist, 2018; Klass,

2015; McChesney, 2004; McMahon et al., 2014; McMahon et al., 2014; McNally et al., 2016;

Shepherd et al., 2014; Smeltzer & Shade, 2017; Winseck, 2016, 2018). I engage with political economic arguments for why control of internet infrastructure is important enough that municipalities and/or engaged citizens, should consider different models of owning and operating infrastructure.

Case Studies

Context. To begin the discussion of case studies, I first lay the groundwork for why

Alberta is a unique locale for community infrastructure research. I discuss how the province built an internet backbone nearly twenty years ago, and the resulting uptake from municipalities. To gain insight on different models of community networks, I look to three Albertan examples, the

Town of Viking Internet Service, the Calgary Internet Exchange Point, and the City of Calgary’s wholesale network. I conducted interviews with the lead person from each organization to better understand the creation, implementation, and operation of each network. The interviews were concerned with the challenges of creating each network model, how the project was conceptualized and made a reality, how the service is provided, and how success is measured, with an eye towards what other communities can learn.

Case Study 1: The Town of Viking Internet Service. The Town of Viking launched an internet service to their community members in early 2019 (Town of Viking, 2020). Town

administration was concerned with getting faster, more reliable internet speeds at better costs and were not content with the existing providers. As their marketing literature boasts, “if you can see the grain elevator, you can get service from us” (Town of Viking, 2020). The fixed wireless model now connects 35 residents, and the town reports they are gaining more users each month as customers switch over after contracts with their current provider expire (McLeod, 2020). The

Town of Viking is most striking because of the relative ease they had setting up the network, the low cost to the town, and therefore the replicability of the project in other small Albertan towns.

Case Study 2: YYCIX. The second network I chose to look at is Calgary’s Internet

Exchange Point, YYCIX. The non-profit is dissimilar from Viking and Calgary as what they offer is less infrastructure, than connectivity. YYCIX leases space in buildings and oversees agreements from network operators to have a physical presence in the same building, and interconnect with other network operators (YYCIX, 2020). This interconnection provides a benefit to all Calgarians as it increases the speed and reliance of networks who use the IXP, by providing more ways for traffic to flow through the internet locally. In addition, it opens pathways even for those that are not connected through the IXP, as additional traffic flows are expanded (de Raadt, 2020). The exchange also has positive impact on privacy, as by interconnecting locally allows more data to stay within Canada’s jurisdiction, rather than flowing down to nearby exchanges, such as Seattle, Wash (de Raadt, 2020), crossing international borders and opening internet user’s information to security risks uncontrolled by Canadian law

(Clement and Obar 2015).

Case Study 3: The City of Calgary Fibre Network. The City of Calgary built and manages a large broadband fibre network they use internally as well as the opportunity for other organizations to rent space on their network. Traditionally, municipalities primarily lease fibre

from telecommunication service providers to facilitate the day-to-day operations of a running a city including the provision of services, to connect departments internally, etc. By relying on their own network, the City of Calgary avoids costs of up to $20 million a year. In addition, the

City acts as a ‘non-dominant carrier,’ selling excess capacity on their network to third parties

(non-city organizations), including non-profits, as well as incumbent service providers (Basto,

2020). Using a ‘wholesale’ model, the City does not provide internet service, just space on the network – those with the technical know how and equipment can rent strands of fibre for their own purposes. The City has built up its infrastructure over the last two decades, with much of its fibre installed during road or transit construction builds (City of Calgary, 2015a). The city’s

‘network’ is made up of multiple different networks that have unique standards and equipment for the specific application. The City’s different business units, such as the Calgary Police

Service, Calgary Transit, and utilities including Water Resources and Water Services all deliver their services by leveraging city fibre.

Setting Up the Discussion

Who Has Access: Geographical differences

While the futuristic possibilities of driverless cars and augmented reality drive media representations of fifth-generation network capabilities, many Canadians remain without access to even basic internet (CRTC, 2020a). Across the country, 87.4% of Canadian households have a wireline internet subscription, while only 52% subscribe to 50 megabits per second (Mbps) or above connection (CRTC, 2019a) — the minimum speed that qualifies as a basic service, according to the federal regulator (CRTC, 2016a). Urban Canadians are more likely to have access to the internet than their rural counterparts (CRTC, 2020a), and there is much that needs to be done to connect the large number of people outside urban centres who have less choice

when it comes to internet service: On average, rural residents have an average of four internet service providers (ISPs) to chose from, whereas urban Canadians have an average of eight

(CRTC, 2019a, p. 79). Less than half of Canadians living in rural areas, 45.6%, have the option to subscribe to the country’s stated basic speeds (CRTC, 2020a). In Alberta, that number drops to

33.2% for rural residents, and 19.6% on First Nation reserves (CRTC, 2020a, table 4.3). When looking at urban prices across the country, Alberta is leading the way when it comes total monthly spending on communications services, at $280.43 a month, while Quebec households spend the least at $188.65 (CRTC, 2019a, p. 33). Urban Albertans pay the highest rates across the country at average $140.43 per month for their mobile (CRTC, 2019a, p. 33). For comparison, Quebec — Canada’s “least concentrated provincial market” (Canadian Media

Concentration Research, 2020, p. 32) — the average subscriber cost for mobile is $73.64 a month (CRTC, 2019a, p. 33).

Who Has Access: Income Differences

In Canada, more than 10% of homes do not have internet access, and 15% do not have a home computer (CRTC, 2019a, p. 52). While some of this may be a personal choice, lower income Canadians are disproportionately represented in the group without access. Of the poorest

20% of Canadians only 69% have a home internet subscription, a full 20% less than the national average of 89% (CRTC, 2019a, p. 52). Like so much of the COVID-19 impact, the problem of digital divides is disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable in our society. At an average income of $19,852 per year, this bottom quintile is spending 9.1% of their annual income on communications services, as compared to the average Canadian income of $208,203, and 1.8% of income on communications services, which includes landline and mobile phone service, home internet and TV service (CRTC, 2019a, p. 31). The high cost of communication services

proportional to income, can lead to lower income Canadians choosing mobile access over landline internet, as evidenced by the latest figures available from Canada’s federal telecommunications regulator. Of the 20% of households with the lowest income, 73% had a mobile phone while only 63% owned home computers (CRTC, 2019a, p. 28). While mobile service allows Canadians to access the growing number of mobile-only services and to stay connected throughout the day when they are away from home, it comes with the added penalty of lower data allowances, and higher prices. Further, these national statistics show that between

2016 and 2017, spending on mobile service went up by 9.7%, and 9.4% on home internet

(CRTC, 2019a, p. 20). As Canadians continue to face increasing price pressures, disproportionately borne by those in the lowest income brackets, Canadian telecommunication industry revenues continue to climb, with the latest figures showing growth of 9.5% in the fixed internet sector, and 1.8% growth in mobile (CRTC, 2020a, infographic 2.1).

Who Has Control: The State of Competition in Canada

While political platitudes to lower internet prices in Canada have increased (ISED, 2019;

Liberal Party of Canada, 2020; Office of Prime Minister, 2020) little progress has been made.

According to data from industry analyst Tefficent Canadian mobile operators make the most revenue per gigabyte of any of the 43 countries they include in their study, and despite

Canadians using relatively little mobile data compared to elsewhere, Canadian telecoms ranked with a group of four countries that had substantially higher average revenue per user than elsewhere (Tefficient, 2020). Another feature of Canada’s mobile telecommunications market is the relatively low level of competition. Canada’s three largest mobile operators, Bell, Telus, and

Rogers, make some of the highest profits in the world for mobile data (Nordicity, 2017;

Tefficent, 2020), and have a market share of 91% (Canadian Media Concentration Research,

2020, p. i).

When it comes to home internet access, “the legacy cable companies, and telecoms operators generally account for 87%” of the market, according to the latest report from the

Canadian Media Concentration Research (CMCR) project (2020, p. ii). The CMCR project, led by Carleton University’s Dwayne Winseck, publishes reports that analyze ownership of

Canada’s network media industries. Canada is unique in its high levels of horizontal and vertical integration. Horizontal, or diagonal, integration happens between industries, in the Canadian telecommunications example this occurs when the same company owns multiple content delivery systems, such as a mobile network, home internet network, and/or a cable, satellite and fibre TV distribution (often referred to as BDUs: broadcasting distribution undertakings).

Whereas vertical integration happens across industries, for example, when a content delivery network also owns content production, such as the internet service provider Bell’s parent company also owning the CTV TV network. In Canada, “the ‘big 4’ vertically-integrated giants… Bell, Rogers, Shaw (Corus) and Quebecor accounted for 56.5% of the $86.2 billion industry” – contrast that with America, where with the four largest “vertically-integrated companies’ accounted for a third” of the industry (CMCR, 2020, p viii). The reason this is important is because of the impact it has on competition, innovation, and affordability.

Conclusion

With this research, I aim to expand my own knowledge on internet access, as well as contribute to the current scholarship on universal access, in Canada, and specifically Alberta, as well as existing literature on alternative internet networks. Through my research on each case

study, my aim to contribute to the body of literature that uses a critical lens to think about current internet infrastructure and to investigate how community members are able to launch and run alternative internet networks. Through this research I explore how different communities, including municipalities as well as engaged citizens, have built their own telecommunications infrastructure. This can take many forms, including leasing wholesale service from existing infrastructure providers and reselling connectivity to end users, by building out fibre or fixed wireless infrastructure you own and operate, or by proving space and agreements to facilitate interconnection between infrastructure operators. While keeping the problem of digital divides as my focus throughout, I investigate the current state of literature on municipal broadband, the history and current state of infrastructure in Alberta, and alternative models for community owned infrastructure. To close the paper, I make policy recommendations that focus on creating and strengthening alternative internet networks at the local level to bring about universal access to affordable, high-speed internet for all Canadians once and for all.

Literature Review

Introduction

A note that in citing research throughout this literature review and the entire thesis, I made a concerted effort to include a diversity of voices, that balanced established thinkers in the field, as well as newer and traditionally marginalized researchers. However, while mostly sticking within telecommunications policy and history in Canada, I found this to be quite the challenge. What is represented here is predominantly done by mostly white, mostly male, researchers. As I continue in academia, I am committed to seek out and amplify voices that add valuable, nuanced perspectives to the problem of universal access to the internet, which traditionally disproportionately affects marginalized and vulnerable communities.

Defining ‘Access’

This research project is centered around the concept of access — the lack of which is the central concern of digital divides — it is important to outline common definitions of access within telecommunications policy literature, civil society discourse, and policy. The

Telecommunications Act of 1993 guides public policy and regulation of the internet in Canada.

Section 7 of the Act lays out its objectives, which include commitments to: “enrich and strengthen the social and economic fabric of Canada” (7a), “render reliable and affordable telecommunications services of high quality accessible to Canadians in both urban and rural areas” (7b), “enhance the efficiency and competitiveness” within the industry (7c), and to

“respond to the economic and social requirements of users” (7h) among other objectives

(Government of Canada, 1993). Within these objectives, we can see a commitment to the public good, as evidenced by the government’s obligation through the act to the social and economic well being of Canadians, as well as the role of the state in ensuring Canadians have access to

‘high quality, accessible’ access. Leslie Regan Shade, a professor at the University of Toronto

Faculty of Information, defines access in her 2010 essay of the same name. She writes that

“achieving consensus on the fundamental values surrounding universal access among the different stakeholders is one of the most challenging ICT [information and communications technology] policy issues today” (p. 126). Shade specifies that different “stakeholders have different conceptions of universal access” (p. 125) and that communities themselves “define access in different ways according to their everyday needs” (p. 126). The challenge in defining access is present throughout the literature. Writing in 2002, Canadian communication scholar

Martin Dowding situated access within a historical context in Canada, pointing to the first references of the term regarding the postal service and later the Railroad Act of 1903, “which refers to guaranteeing ‘carriage’ to those who cannot afford to pay” (p. 10). This historical importance of access to communication networks in Canada is consistent within the literature

(Babe, 1990; Innis, 1950; Kozak, 2000; McMahon et al., 2014; Winseck, 1995). In “Foundations of Canadian communication thought” Robert E. Babe, himself a foundational figure in the field, writes that there has long been a “Canadian preoccupation with community in the face of isolation, regionalism, bilingualism, multiculturalism, and climatic adversity, and with maintaining an identity in the face of a powerful neighbour” (p. 3). The presumed longing for community and a desire to define ourselves against the United States frame early research around communication infrastructure in Canada (Innis, 1950; Kroker, 1984). Defining access “is not easy, mainly because, historically, business leaders, legislators, regulators, social critics, and

scholars have not been unanimous in what universal access mean[s]” (Dowding, 2010, p. 10).

Shade, writing in 2000 with Clement, describes the problem as:

While access is consistently identified as a key principle in policy discussions, it is not an end in itself. Access simply enables further activities that can only partially be specified beforehand. There are three main questions to address: 1) Access for what purposes?; 2) Access for whom?; and 3) Access to what? (p. 2.)

Throughout this thesis I utilize the concept of access, within the context the internet, to counteract “monopolies of knowledge” (Innis, 1950), enrich democracy through empowering individuals and communities (McChesney, 1994, 2008) and level the playing field for socioeconomic opportunities.

‘Access for What Purposes?’

There has long been an assumption that access to the internet is a public good. According to Canadian legal precedent, it is. A 1996 Federal Court of Appeal case found that “the provision of internet access should be considered a public good and a social utility” (Shade, 2010, p. 126).

If we look to the literature to define the public good, a salient example is “closely working with the values of equality and citizenship within a democracy” (Shepherd, Taylor, & Middleton,

2014, p. 2). Following in the critical political economy tradition of Canadian communications scholars, many contemporary researchers argue that “one of the guiding theoretical constructs of the internet is that it enables and empowers the edges of technical, economic, political, and social networks. To a considerable degree this initial (in part utopian) vision has been derailed”

(McMahon et al., 2014, p. 250). This is to say, utopian ideas that the internet would be an equalizer of knowledge that would work to facilitate the erasure of societal divides based on class, gender, race, etc. (Barlow, 1996; Morozov, 2011; Turner, 2006) did not materialize, answering the question of “Access for what purposes?” (Shade & Clement, 2000). The time

people spend on the internet is increasingly spent interacting with fewer and fewer website applications. Those applications have profited greatly off this narrowing: internet giants have commodified attention (Wu, 2016), as well as habits and whereabouts both online and off

(Angwin, 2014) to sell users’ behaviour to ad brokers. Those website applications are now some of the biggest companies in the world (Wu, 2018), dominating “the middle and top layers of the internet — for example, operating systems (iOS, Windows, Android), search engines (Google), social networks (Facebook), online retailing (Amazon), over-the-top TV (Netflix), browsers

(Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Microsoft Explorer), and domain names (ICANN)” (Winseck,

2017, p. 229). Further, not only did the web not level the playing field, in many cases the internet has worked to exacerbate divisions that exist offline (Eubanks, 2017; Noble, 2018; Tufekci &

Brashears, 2014). For governments at all levels, then, citizens should expect policy that works to counteract the corporatization and centralization of the internet by creating conditions for both private and public providers to increase access to broadband as a public good. While government intervention into the platforms that people use once they get online is a laudable research area, and one that spans across national jurisdictions, it is worth noting but outside of the scope of this paper. Canadian governments at all levels, however, can play a direct role in the physical infrastructure of the internet within their borders. By creating policy that enables more Canadians to get online, policymakers not only work towards the long-stated goal of fulfilling universal service obligations, but can create opportunities for citizens to have more ownership over their communication infrastructure.

‘Access for Whom, and to What?’

The question of ‘access for whom,’ is clearer: access for everyone, in ways that work for them. Access to what, exactly, is more straightforward, but requires a lengthier answer. To

define ‘access to what,’ I turn to Canada’s federal telecommunications regulator, who in

December 2016 named high-speed broadband a universal service objective, moving the internet into the same category as phone service, and carrying with it funding obligations (CRTC,

2016a). The federal regulator mandated that high-speed broadband should include “access [to] speeds of at least 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload, and to subscribe to a service offering with an unlimited data allowance” (CRTC, 2016a).

In regard to mobile access the decision is vague, stating that the “latest generally deployed mobile wireless technology should be available” — it is primarily a decision about landline internet. While the federal government’s speed targets and labelling of high-speed broadband as a basic service are laudable, it does not consider the increasingly blurred distinction between mobile and home internet. The two are clearly defined in policy at the national level, and certainly for consumers when it comes to billing, but actual usage of the internet on mobile and landline and not clearly delineated. Citizens connect with government services, engage with employment and education, and participate socially and political on their mobile phones, as they do on their computers. The high cost of communication spending for

Canadians, especially those in low-income households, can result in forcing citizens to chose between the services because they can only afford one subscription, or because they do not have a computer. While mobile access provides flexibility, and facilities texting and location-based services, low income and minority populations are overrepresented in those who rely on only mobile access (Tsetsi & Rains, 2017; Warf, 2019). For those that can only afford mobile internet access, low data allowances result in missed opportunities to engage or costly penalties for exceeding data limits, as well as limited access to applications that cannot run on mobile phones.

This gap in functionality creates what some have called a “mobile internet underclass” (Napoli &

Obar, 2014). As such, including mobile internet in the question of ‘access to what’ is apt.

Canadian sociologists and political economists Robert Pike and Vincent Mosco explore the concept of universal access through telephone use (1986). They examine penetration rates of telephone service which at the time was thought to be a basic service, much as high-speed broadband is considered today. In a contrast to digital telecommunication services in Canada, which are among the most expensive worldwide (Nordicity, 2017; Tefficent, 2020), Canadians enjoyed relatively low prices for telephone service (Pike & Mosco, 1986). As the promise of the

“next generation” technology of the time, personal computers, sparked imaginations, Pike and

Mosco urged Canadians not to take universal access of the telephone for granted. They close the piece asking, “Will we be so mystified by the fantasies of a computer society that we lose sight of the many people who cannot afford the basic price of admission to the Information Age?”

(1986, p. 32). This warning is pitch perfect for contemporary excitement around the promises of

5G, the speeds and low latency of which will ostensibly enable luxuries like self-driving cars while tens of thousands of Canadians lack access to even basic internet service (CRTC, 2020a).

Is Access Enough?: From Digital Divides to the Data Divide

When doing research in hopes to impact the public interest, it is also pertinent to draw out assumptions around access as a public good. Undersea cables and internet infrastructure in the north is a great example of laying bare some of these assumptions (Hogan, 2019). Is providing infrastructure to northern communities always a public good? Writing about a commercial project to lay fibre optic cables in the Arctic Northwest Passage, Mél Hogan, a communication professor who researches server farms and data centers, writes that “connectivity, in and of itself, is seen as technological and as inherently good” (2019) — underscoring the reality that the cyber

utopianism of the 1990s (Barlow, 1996; Morozov, 2011; Noble, 2018; Turner, 2006) still often goes unquestioned. Hogan places the arctic infrastructure project in a historical context, looking to the early work of Innis (1923) on the Canadian Pacific Railway, which was framed as a

“necessary imposition serving universal ideals about modernity, improvement, and progress, based on trade and commerce as tools for self-governance” (2019).

Scholars like Mark Andrejevic have issued a warning call contrary to the common sense of many information activists: That solving digital divides will only worsen the data divide.

Andrejevic writes that “data mining reflects both the relations of ownership and control that shape access to communication and information resources” (2014, p. 1675). With his coining of the term “data divide,” Andrejevic calls attention to the vast amounts of information collected about connected citizens, and the ways that information can be used to shift our behaviour. He urges scholars and citizens alike to “anticipate the social, cultural, and political consequences now” (p. 1686) as the insights borne by the citizen data analyzed in the aggregate will be so powerful in terms of potential to influence the masses that data have nots are in danger of losing even more control. As more and more information is generated about nearly every aspect of our lives, the distribution of who has access to that data, and the ability to draw conclusions from it, is of concern. While universal access to the internet creates opportunities for citizens to access vast amounts of knowledge, the act of being online in turn creates vast amounts of data for-profit internet giants may use in ways that go against citizens’ interests. For Andrejevic, more access comes with more opportunities to lose control. In Shoshana Zuboff’s recent work Surveillance

Capitalism, she writes that “digital inclusion is now a means to others’ commercial ends” (2019, p. 9). She too calls into question the myth that access equals equality, writing that surveillance capitalism “strips away the illusion that the networked form has some kind of indigenous moral

content, that being ‘connected’ is somehow intrinsically pro-social, innately inclusive, or naturally tending towards the democratization of knowledge” (p. 9).

Andrejevic is critical of the notion of an online commons where information is shared freely, instead suggesting the internet is a ‘digital enclosure.’ This online public sphere controlled and enclosed by commercial interests is “marked by surveillance, where every action and transaction generates information about itself” (Andrejevic, 2007, p. 2). Rather than being a departure from history, be it the salons of the 18th century or the early modern mass media that critical social theorist Jürgen Habermas was writing about (1962), the online world of the internet is a continuation of the past. Habermas’ argument that the “public sphere as a sphere of equality and inclusion is an ideological cover for the bourgeoisie’s economic interests”

(Thomassen, 2010, p. 34) holds true today. The public sphere, even online, is marked by bias and exclusion. Scholars like Andrejevic and Zuboff may argue the change is that its co-option by businesses interests has been taken to extreme heights as internet platforms are trailblazing a new era of communicative control. The public sphere is dominated by these corporations who are led by instrumental reason to encourage citizens to share information — hegemonic or counter- narratives, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s more data.

Andrejevic’s work exposes the myths of earlier utopian narratives to show how corporations were able to exploit “users” data and labour while they championed the democratic possibilities of the internet. Andrejevic draws upon the audience commodity debate among

Canadian political economist of communication Dallas Smythe (1977) and communication scholar Sut Jhally (1987), as well as work from critical theorist Michel Foucault (1975), to understand new forms of audience labour and their relation to surveillance. He writes that his

“approach [is] influenced by the concerns of political economy and the analysis of disciplinary

panopticism. Conceived as a form of labour, the work of being watched can be critiqued in terms of power and differential access to both the means of surveillance and the benefits of their deployment” (2007, p. 232). Instead of focussing on privacy, which is rooted in private property,

Andrejevic asks who is benefitting from the work of being watched.

Viewing internet infrastructure, and the promise of access to the internet that often accompanies it, not as a brand-new project but as the latest in a long line of infrastructure built by powerful people and imposed on everyone else helps to underscore the importance of questioning in whose interests’ connectivity serves. As Hogan writes, it is important to consider

“the possibility that internet technology may not be the great equalizer it promises to be — but this remains a question for northern communities to determine for themselves” (2019, p. 16).

Similarly, Safiya Umoja Noble’s call out of cyber-utopianism as “rooted in ideas of unmarked humanity” (2018, p. 62) is an important flag to lay bare assumptions, and ensure infrastructure projects, like community broadband networks, are not further marginalizing already disadvantaged communities.

Scholarship on Municipal Broadband

Much of the current scholarship on municipal broadband highlights the social and economic goods afforded to communities that have high-speed, reliable, affordable access.

Universal access to the internet is near-globally viewed as critical civic infrastructure, and an increasing number of municipalities are showing that it is both possible and profitable to deploy telecommunications infrastructure as a utility. To ensure universal access, some communities have not been content to wait for existing privatized internet service providers to come to the rescue and have looked to public models. Communities wanting to build a public network often utilize a public good framework, arguing that high-speed, affordable broadband should be

considered a basic utility (McLeod, 2020; Liem, 2014). Municipalities that have been successful in setting up and operating broadband networks point to the positive impact on the economy, as well as improvements in education, health care delivery and local community-building

(Crawford & Mohr, 2013; Lobo, 2015; Talbot, 2017). Municipal networks pose a direct challenge to the existing for-profit model, which is dominated by a handful of incumbent telecommunications providers in most areas. Because municipalities already deploy and operate large infrastructure projects, including storm and wastewater utilities, electrical grids, transit systems and roads, they are well positioned to leverage both their experience and existing infrastructure to build out and operate telecommunications networks (Sadowski et al., 2009).

Urban governments are in a unique position to benefit greatly from economies of scope by becoming further vertically integrated, leveraging their fixed overhead costs to build out broadband infrastructure. For private network operators to build out facilities they must have large amounts of capital, and the ability to take on risk, for the substantial sunk and fixed costs that municipalities already bear, and which acts as a barrier to entry for smaller providers as well as incumbents looking to expand or upgrade their network. In Canada, many communities have started their own broadband or Wi-Fi networks, including notable projects in Coquitlam, BC;

Stratford, ON; and the region of Eastern Ontario (Eastern Ontario Regional Network, 2020;

OpenMedia, 2020), as well as a number of networks of various styles and models within Alberta including Olds, Viking, Wateron, Parkland County, Lakeshore, Taber, and the community of

Maskwacis (Olds Institute, 2020; Town of Viking, 2020; Waterton Lakes National Park, 2020;

Parkland County, 2020; McNally et al., 2016; Municipal District of Taber, 2020; Watson, 2018;

Young, 2017). In the United States, more than 560 communities have some form of municipal network (Institute for Local Self-Reliance, 2020).

While people living within rural areas are more likely to be on the wrong side of the geographical digital divide, affordability has been a major obstacle to access even where infrastructure is technically available (Blanton, 2013; Haight et al., 2014). Much of the discourse on universal access has tended to focus on the ‘last mile,’ with regulators assuming that

“broadband connectivity problems are primarily a rural concern as ‘market forces’ should be sufficient to deliver services of sufficient quality in urban areas. However, even in large cities with low costs and high income, incentives of providers to invest in capacity enhancements and scalable fiber networks can be limited” (Rajabiun & McKelvey, 2019). Despite having higher densities, often thought to go hand in hand with broadband penetration, residents within inner- city areas (Koch, 2018), or urban residents in lower income brackets (CRTC, 2019), face broadband access inequalities. Those that are on the lowest income brackets tend to spend a higher percentage of their income on broadband services (Hudson, 2010; Gonzales, 2015;

CRTC, 2019).

Much of the current literature focuses on case studies of municipalities that have built their own broadband or Wi-Fi networks (Crawford & Mohr, 2013; Hudson, 2010; Morisson &

Bevilacqua, 2018; Middleton & Crow, 2008; Sadowski et al., 2009). The City of Chattanooga, a mid-sized city in Tennessee, was the first internet service provider in the country to launch a gigabyte per second residential network when it launched in 2010 (Morisson & Bevilacqua,

2018). The infrastructure, run by the municipal electric provider, has been credited with injecting life into the community, creating a booming knowledge economy (Wyatt, 2014; Rushe, 2014), large increase in population (United States Census Bureau, 2020) and economic growth (Pare,

2018). In many of the American communities that have been successful setting up and operating municipal networks, a near-ubiquitous characteristic is that the initiative was led by an existing

public power utility (Mitchell, 2012). Much of the literature suggests municipalities that own their own electricity distributors are well suited to the provision of broadband, experience, universal provision, existing infrastructure (Stokes & Baller, 2005).

Because many municipalities already run their own internal networks, they are able to

“take advantage of scale and scope economies achieved internally by linking different locations of semi-public institutions and required only incremental investments to expand service provision externally” (Sadowski et al., 2009). Municipalities can leverage their experience operating large-scale infrastructure projects in a way that other would-be challengers to incumbent telecommunications providers are not able to. In addition, much of the necessary fixed costs inherent in providing civic services, as well as existing rights-of-way, can be leveraged to facilitate cost savings that cannot be matched by private corporations (Bar & Park,

2006; Koch, 2018). There are many models for a municipal fibre network, including owning and operating their own infrastructure for internal use, avoiding the costs associated with leasing fibre from a private provider. Secondly, a municipality may utilize the network internally, as well as open the network up to sell wholesale access, stopping short of providing service to residents or businesses themselves, but providing access to their infrastructure for private companies to deliver service at the retail level. This open access model, where network management and service provision are structurally separated, has been proposed as a solution to the lack of competition in the telecommunication sector (Middleton, 2011). A third model could include internal use, wholesale access, and the provision of internet service by the municipality to connect homes and businesses, much like a utility. A benefit of this third vertically integrated model is that it allows municipalities to recoup the costs of the capital investment more quickly by using revenues from service provision (Sadowski et al., 2009).

Arguments against municipally owned and operated infrastructure, especially models that include service provision, are the potential that inexperience will lead to mismanagement, that private service providers will be at a disadvantage, and that network quality will degrade over time as the absence of competition will disincentivize innovation (Bar & Park, 2006; Landgraf,

2020; Tongue 2001). In the United States, lobbying from incumbent telecommunications firms at the state level has been successful in 22 states, where laws aimed at curbing municipal broadband networks have been ratified (Chamberlain, 2020). In developing its network,

Chattanooga’s public utility faced four lawsuits from dominant ISPs, as well as “an intense public relations campaign funded by incumbent telecommunications companies with the intent of discrediting municipal broadband” (Koch, 2018).

Conclusion A theme throughout Canadian communication scholarship on infrastructure is the creation of policy that maximizes the public interest. The literature showcases academics that are concerned not just with research, but with how to put it into practice. Throughout the work it is evident that there is a feedback loop between research and engagement (praxis), as one enriches the other. There is a tradition to see new technologies in a historical light and situated within a political, economic, and social context, rather than as revolutionary on their own. The potential for social change comes not from technology itself, which often reinforces existing inequalities, but from human actors within a system. Throughout the work collected for this research project, there is an emphasis on universal access to communication technologies, whether than be the telephone or, later, the internet. The theme of access was present in both published academic work, as well as recommendations to policy makers and regulators. The body of literature also emphasizes that the public interest is well served when policy making includes members of the

public, including academics, individuals, and civil society organizations. There is also a focus on competition and consolidation within media industries, and a similarity in the concern that the needs of industry are often placed ahead of the public throughout the period the authors are working within.

Methodology

Introduction

In this chapter, I introduce the methodological framework by which I address the central question of my thesis: Are alternatives to commercial, corporate internet networks possible? If so, how are these networks imagined, built, and operated? I briefly outline below what case studies I chose and why they are the right ones to inform my research questions. I provide an accounting of the primary documents I used, and why they are helpful. I quickly overview how I structured interviews for this project, and why I chose that structure. In addition, I outline who I spoke to and why they were the right people. Finally, I set out the limitations of this project concerned to my methodological approach. I opted to limit the study to the creation and operation of networks, rather than the how it is taken up by citizens. I discuss how researching the day-to-day use of the network, by interviewing users of the infrastructure would be beneficial to researchers and policy makers interested in effective policy that serves the public good by centering the experiences of users, but suggest it is outside the scope of this master’s thesis.

Methodology Used For this research project I chose to use a non-experimental method, that of case studies.

While case studies cannot offer direct cause and effect relationships, they do allow for a detailed understanding of specific events or projects (Seale, 2012, p. 121). My aim was to research alternative networks within Alberta, and as such I chose an array of case studies of representational alternative networks in the province. To begin, I looked to primary documents to

inform my research, including information put out by the creators of the network in question, as well as policy documents from municipal, provincial and federal governments. To dive deeper into my research questions, especially around how networks are imagined, I spoke with at least one person from each internet network.

Case Studies Chosen I chose to look at three alternative networks. While I was tempted to include a wider range of examples, including the rural communities of Olds and Waterton, as well as the Bragg

Creek-based mesh network, Mage Networks. However, I wanted to allow for the space to explore each within the limited scope of a master’s thesis.

Viking, Alberta functioned as an example of a rural network. While there are multiple rural networks within the province, Viking offered a fresh perspective. The wireless network was launched in the summer of 2019 and has provided another connectivity option for families and businesses turning to online services more than ever before in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Calgary Internet Exchange (YYCIX) is not a traditional internet network that builds infrastructure and offers service to business or residential clients. Instead, it operates as a connector between existing networks. I chose to expand my understanding of networks to include YYCIX because I was intrigued by its non-profit status and the involvement of volunteer community members. Like the City of Calgary’s wholesale network, it also operated as a case study of an alternative network within an urban setting.

Calgary’s wholesale network is unique to the province and sheds light on infrastructure within larger urban areas where incumbent networks already exist. Urban municipalities face

different constraints when it comes to internet access, as frequently more competition exists within the geographic space. I wanted to learn the motivation behind why a community would choose to operate a network when a complete absence or minimal competition is not the driving factor.

Primary Documents

Federal Data and Reports

Like those in many countries around the world, policy-makers and regulators in Canada have long sought to address what they saw as the coming barriers to universal access, in order to create policy and government intervention that would spur economic development and social inclusion. The Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC) was established in the mid-1990s and laid the groundwork for how the federal government should support telecommunications infrastructure (Government of Canada, 2004). As a follow up to the IHAC, Canada’s National

Broadband Task Force (NBTF) was formed in 2001, and published a report outlining guiding principles and policy recommendations. Its mandate was to create a roadmap for how to connect all Canadians with broadband by 2004 (NBTF, 2001). The report is valuable as a baseline for where the country was, and what it hoped to achieve just as the internet started to become ubiquitous in middle- and upper-class homes in the developed world. Two decades later the federal government, spearheaded by Heritage Canada, launched a wholesale review of the country’s two guiding communications legislation acts, the Telecommunications and

Broadcasting Acts (Heritage Canada, 2018).

I draw upon documents from Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada, the federal body which oversees the Telecommunications Act, including their terms of reference for the review (ISED, 2018a), as well as their overview of the Act (ISED, 2018b).

In 2019, the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review panel released a document outlining what they heard from Canadians, based on meetings with stakeholders chosen by the panel (Government of Canada, 2019). In 2020, the panel released their full set of recommendations (BTLR, 2020). Other bodies with federal jurisdiction release recommendations and regulations that have an impact on Canada’s communications environment, including the

Office of the Auditor General, and Canada’s Competition Board. In 2018, the Office of the

Auditor General of Canada presented a report to parliament about connectivity in rural and remote area that called for greater measures to be taken to address the digital divide. I also draw upon ISED Minster Navdeep Bains’ response to the Auditor General’s report (ISED, 2018c).

CRTC Documents and Canadian Industry Reports

Throughout this thesis I reference decisions made by Canada’s federal regulator, including regulations about the state of wholesale wireline service (CRTC, 2014a, 2014b) and the review of municipal rights-of-way (ROW) (CRTC, 2019b). In addition, I include a number of interventions submitted by public policy participants to these hearings. I also utilize transcripts and video feeds from the in-person hearings held by the commission, to reference material presented by interveners that wish to make presentations to the Commission (Cable Public

Affairs Channel, 2014). Perhaps the most substantial decision released by the CRTC over the last decade, especially as it comes to universal access, was their 2016 declaration that affordable, high-speed access to the internet was a basic service (CRTC, 2016a). This decision carries with it responsibilities for the federal government to ensure no Canadian is left behind. A striking element of the decision included the ambitious speed targets set by the panel, substantially increasing the previous targets (CRTC, 2016a).

The CRTC also collects, organizes, and releases detailed communications data from across the country, which serves as a benchmark report for policy makers and advocates, industry players, as well as academics. The Communications Monitoring Report (CMR) is released annually and includes important details for those concerned with closing digital divides, namely about how and where people are connected as well as demographic information (CRTC,

2018; CRTC, 2019a, CRTC 2020a). I include CMR data throughout this report to gauge the state of internet penetration for various groups of Canadians. A drawback of the report is that it can quickly become outdated. Once the CRTC gathers the data, analyzes it, and releases there are often lags of two to three years. For example, the CRTC’s 2020 CMR, which is a snapshot of

2019, includes some findings that are based on data from as far back as 2016 (CRTC, 2020a).

However, while the CMR may not keep pace with the state of quick moving technological advances it acts as a baseline for connectivity across the country. The CRTC also maintains public data about the country’s registered telecommunications providers and where they are located (CRTC 2020x), which is used within this research to gain an understanding of the choice residents and businesses across Alberta have when accessing internet service.

In addition to data provided by the CRTC, I draw upon data from private firms including

Nordicity Group Ltd., a Canadian-based consulting firm which was commissioned by ISED, most importantly for our purposes, to conduct a Price Comparison Study of Telecommunications

Services in Canada and Select Foreign Jurisdictions (2017). I also draw on data from Tefficient, an international firm which specializes in public industry analysis, and releases detailed telecommunications comparisons across national jurisdictions. Tefficient’s reports are used by both industry and public bodies and are helpful for this study in comparing Canada’s market to other similar nations (2020). Another key set of benchmarks for this thesis comes from the

Canadian Media Concentration Research (CMCR). The CMCR is a helpful resource in understanding the state of competition and concentration in the Canadian telecommunications landscape, specifically for this project when it comes to what service is offered by incumbents in

Alberta (CMCR, 2020).

Reports from Outside Canada

To understand Canada in an international context, I draw upon resources from global bodies, including the United Nations (UN) Broadband Commission, especially their 2020 report on Financing and Funding Models for Sustainable Broadband Development, as well as the

International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The ITU, is an agency of the UN which works to establish standards and coordinate policy for information and communication technologies

(ICT) worldwide. Its members include federal regulations from across the globe, as well as industry representatives, academics, and other interested organizations (ITU, 2020a). The ITU collects data from its member organizations and releases reports on the State of Broadband, including a 2020 report I use in this thesis (ITU, 2020b). Other data that is drawn from outside of

Canada include census numbers, and a map of community broadband networks in the United

States (United States Census Bureau, 2020; Institute for Local Self-Reliance, 2020).

Provincial Data

While telecommunications legislation falls with the federal government’s authority, like many issues concerning Canadians, the lines of jurisdiction are not always clear cut. When it comes to ensuring universal internet access, the provinces can and do play a role (Alberta

Municipal Affairs, 2020). Alberta has been a leader in provincial telecommunication involvement in many ways, including their creation of an internet backbone, and as the home of

Cybera, the provincial arm of Canada’s national research and education network (NREN), which is a leader in the network.

Spurred to action partly by the federal IHAC and NBTF recommendations, the province of Alberta announced its plans to build a provincial broadband backbone in 2001 (Mitchell,

2003). For general information, including maps and updates about the SuperNet, I gathered information from documents on the Alberta Government’s website (Service Alberta, n.d.; Service Alberta, 2020; Government of Alberta, 2020). I also drew upon updates from the province, including their 2012 strategy, the Final Mile Rural Connectivity Initiative, intended to connect nearly 50,000 Albertans still without high-speed internet (Government of Alberta, 2012).

In the late 2010s, the contract between the province and Axia, who operated much of the SuperNet expired. For details about this important shift in ownership and operation of the provincial network, I include Bell’s official statement on their acquisition of Axia NetMedia, including all the company’s “operations of Alberta's SuperNet broadband network” (BCE Inc.,

2018).

For an overall view of the Alberta’s telecommunications infrastructure, I gathered information from the Alberta NREN partner Cybera. The non-profit’s 2016 report was useful in informing this thesis as it provides a detailed account of digital Infrastructure throughout the province (Cybera, 2016). I also drew from public documents available from municipal internet networks in Alberta including, Olds (Olds Institute, 2020), Waterton Lakes National Park (2020),

Parkland County (2020), and Taber (Municipal District of Taber, 2020).

Primary Documents for Case Study 1: Viking, AB

My first case study of municipal network’s is the Town of Viking’s Internet Service. To learn about the network, I gathered data from the municipality’s public website which included

information about the network itself, costs and contracts for customers, as well as a map of the current and planned expansion of their infrastructure (Town of Viking, 2020).

For demographic information about the municipality, I used federal data from Statistics Canada, whose last full census profile of the community was done in 2016. For information on internet service providers available in the community and their rates I gathered data from the CRTC

(2020x), MCSNet (2020), Telus (2020), and the website FindInternet.ca (2020).

Primary documents from Case Study 2: YYCIX

Public information about Calgary’s public internet exchange, YYCIX, is available on their website. Cited in this research project is information from throughout their website as well as meeting minutes from annual general meetings (AGMs). In addition, I used information gathered from the presentation of the YYCIX board from their 2019 and 2020 AGMs. A helpful resource in understanding the creation of YYCIX was a presentation done by network administrator Theo deRaadt in 2013, which outlines the creation of the network.

Primary documents for Case Study 3: City of Calgary

Aside from my interview with the City’s lead fibre optics planner David Basto, the largest source of information I draw on about the City of Calgary’s fibre network comes from their inaugural Fibre Infrastructure Strategy which was presented to and approved by City

Council in 2015. The strategy clearly outlines the state of city-owned fibre infrastructure at the time, includes detailed analysis why municipalities have a role in telecommunications infrastructure and policy, and make recommendations for the City to adopt. Each year since it was approved, there is an annual update, which is also used throughout the section on Calgary’s infrastructure (City of Calgary, 2017; City of Calgary, 2018a; City of Calgary, 2020c). The City of Calgary’s website includes information for third parties who may be interested in leasing fibre

from the City. Within this project I cite details from the site that relates to general information about accessing fibre (City of Calgary, 2020a), their price list for fibre optic services (City of

Calgary, 2020d), and draft license and maintenance agreements (City of Calgary, 2020b).

Information was also included from a presentation done about the network for a national audience by the City’s lead fibre optic planner (City of Calgary, 2016). In addition to City reports directly about their fibre infrastructure, I looked to City-wide planning documents that places the network as just part of the City’s overall strategy. The municipality’s 2019-2022 overarching planning and budget document (City of Calgary, 2019b) was helpful in this regard. I also briefly employ data from third-party reports from bodies not directly involved with the City, including contractors at Taylor Warwick Consulting Limited who did a detailed gathering of the

Calgary broadband landscape in 2016. Cybera’s 2016 Alberta Digital Infrastructure Report also contained data about the city, which is used within this thesis. The history of Calgary’s municipally-owned communications infrastructure starts with the city-owned utility Enmax. To inform this I look to documents from Enmax about the sale of its telecommunications’ arm

Envision to Shaw (Enmax Corporation, 2013).

Because policy is central to my thesis, specifically in relation to alternative to incumbent telecommunications networks, I draw upon primary documents from public policy participation done by the City of Calgary, and about the City. This research project includes a City of Calgary submission to the CRTC during their 2015 review of wholesale wireline services, as well as their in-person appearance at the hearing (Benfeld, 2014). As well as participating in ‘Part 1’ applications by other entities. The City has also been at the forefront of policy discussions around RoW and municipal jurisdiction. This participation has included a decision from the

Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta in 2018, briefly drawn upon in this thesis, as well as a follow

up review by the CRTC, which the City submitted a position to (City of Calgary, 2019a) and the

CRTC’s decision (2019b, January 25).

Straight to the Source: Interviews with Network Creators and Administrators

To gain an understanding above and beyond what primaries documents from the networks offer, I chose to interview creators that were central to each network. While quantitative data clarifies much of telecommunications infrastructure and policy, relying on statistics and earnings alone speaks to an “ontological assumption that the social world is basically a mathematically ordered universe in which everything that exists, exists in number form” (Kvale, 1996, p. 67). To understand the implications of that quantitative data on the lived experiences of people affected, giving them a chance to speak to those experiences makes for better research, and better policy. By designing this research project to include interviews I was able to collect a richer source of information than what primary documents allow for. Interviews are an opportunity to gain insight into the attitudes, behaviour, opinions, feelings, and knowledge from those involved (Wengraf, 2001). Interviewing "is a uniquely sensitive and powerful method for capturing the experiences and lived meanings of the subjects' everyday world. Interviews allow the subjects to convey to others their situation from their own perspective and in their own words” (Kvale, 1996, p. 70). Instead of testing hypothesis, or ‘getting answers,’ interviewing is about prioritizing the stories, and meaning making, of other people (Seidman, 2006). Studying community networks this prioritization of the experiences of the people imaging and building these networks is central to my work and would not be possible without actually talking to people. And as anthropologist and qualitative research advocate Daniel Bertaux wrote in 1981 amidst debates over the value of qualitative research: “If given a chance to talk freely, people appear to know a lot about what is going on” (Bertaux, 1981, p. 39).

While community networks require the imagination, buy in, and labour from wider communities, in each of the three case studies I chose there was a clear person who had been involved from the inception of the network through its lifespan and has played a central role in its creation and operation. In Viking, Alberta Don McLeod, the town’s chief administrative officer has been central to the network, in Calgary’s municipal network the City’s lead fibre optic planner David Basto has been involved in the network for two decades. Calgary’s public internet exchange, YYCIX, also has a central figure, network manager Theo de Raadt. While each representative from their organization stood out as the clear choice to speak with, this study is limited in scope by using only one source from each network. To counter this limitation, primary documents from each organization do provide wider context.

For each interview, I started with the same template for questions to gain an understanding of each, as well as to compare and contrast their answers. This type of structured interview is commonly referred to as a ‘standardized interview,’ which allows for each interview subject to receive the same prompts to answer about their own project (Berg, 1994, p. 15), as well as to comply with the University of Calgary’s ethics board requirements to see approve the questions. However, throughout the interviews I deviated from the list of questions in order to follow up on interesting themes or topics the interviewees brought up, as well as to ask clarifications about things I did not understand. I found not diverting from a pre-approved list of questions made ahead of time was too restrictive and so through the process shifted into a ‘semi- structured life world’ format (Kvale, 1996). This flexibility allowed new ideas to be included and explored as well as empowered participants to inform the research in ways each they believed to be important.

For each network, I asked the following questions:

1. What was the biggest challenge to overcome in starting the [specific community network]? 2. What is the biggest challenge you are facing right now building the network? 3. How did the project come to be? 4. When and by whom was the project first proposed? 5. When was the first official meeting about the project? What was the agenda for that meeting? Do you consider it to have been successful? 6. How is the [municipality or organization’s] network funded? Is any municipal, provincial or federal funding being utilized? 7. Does your network utilize the SuperNet? 8. Did having the SuperNet available make a difference to you in building the network? 9. If so, what questions do you/did you have for communities that have used the SuperNet? 10. Were there any models that the [municipality or organization] used, ie/ did you look to certain communities, here in Alberta, or municipalities in the United States or elsewhere? 11. By what metrics will you consider the [municipality or organization’s] network to be a success? 12. Is the community using the [municipality or organization’s] network in the way you envisioned? What about residents, specifically? What about businesses, specifically? 13. Do you think the [municipality or organization’s] network has had a positive impact on the community? 14. What advice do you have for other communities looking to build a network?

A Framework of Analysis

In this thesis I used a few broad themes to investigate my central question: “Are alternatives to commercial, corporate Internet networks possible? If so, how are these networks imagined, built, and operated?” Throughout the interviews with network creators, and in primary documents, the main themes were: how networks are imagined/created; problems of existing framework; state support/ usage of existing public infrastructure or funds; knowledge sharing between communities; and the usage/impact of network. In the table below, I map some of the sources I used to investigate these broad themes.

Table 1: Methodological Framework

How networks are Interview questions 1 through 5, as well as meeting minutes from an imagined/created early City of Calgary meeting.

Problems of existing Primary documents such as government reports including the framework CRTC’s Communication Monitoring Report, the Office of the Auditor General Report, private reports by Nordicity and Tefficient, and academic-based reports of the Canadian Media Concentration Research project. I also look to government documents regarding the review of the Telecommunications and Broadcasting Acts, including reports from Heritage Canada, Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada, as well as stakeholder submissions and recommendations from the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review panel.

State support: Usage of Interview questions 6 through 9, as well as primary documents existing public including council reports by the City of Calgary and the public infrastructure or funds website and annual general meeting minutes from the Calgary Internet Exchange Point.

Knowledge sharing Interview questions 10 and 14, as well as a submission to the CRTC between communities by academic Michael McNally.

Usage/impact of Interview questions 11 through 13, as well as primary documents network including policy submissions and council reports by the City of Calgary.

Methodological Limitations: Whose Voices Were Included

Another clear limitation of this project is the absence of the voices of users themselves.

While initially envisioning this research, I intended to conduct focus groups in each community to hear from citizens about why and how they used the network or, importantly, why they hadn’t.

While surveying the academic literature on Alberta’s SuperNet I was impressed by a 2007 study that centered residents in four Albertan communities to “explore how rural community members

made sense of the SuperNet as a communication technology in the context of their practices and perceived needs and against the background of their existing experience of internet use”

(Bakardjieva, p. 1). The approach of asking community members themselves if and how they engage with public internet infrastructure is valuable in assessing the actual impact these networks has on citizens. While speaking with community network visionaries is useful, without engaging participants of the communities themselves, it is difficult to extend the conclusions I draw to the lived experience of Albertans. The lackluster implementation of the SuperNet itself and the Alberta government’s oversight of tapping into the lived experiences of Albertans, is a pertinent reminder that research and policy decisions about connected communities should centre members of those communities.

The research approach of community informatics (CI) centres around the idea of bottom- up community development. The multi-disciplinary approach draws on a “broad range of academic disciplines and cultural traditions, from economics and cultural anthropology to feminist theories of technology and Indigenous forms of knowledge,” (Bytheway et al., 2015).

This approach echoes many social science researchers including those who place high value on engaging participants in research (Harraway, 1988; Tallbear, 2014a; Tallbear, 2014b; Eubanks,

2018), situated knowledges (Harraway, 1988; Harding, 1989; Lentz, 2014), and “standing with” communities (as opposed to “giving back”) (Tallbear, 2014b). CI approaches are concerned not just with bridging digital divides, but by centering how communities themselves use information technologies “particularly for the purposes of local economic and social development, social inclusion, civic participation, and political empowerment within marginalized populations and communities” (Clement et al., 2012, p. 15). In the tradition of political economy, CI is concerned with not just the physical infrastructure, but how it functions within specific communities.

Introducing the inaugural edition of the Journal of Community Informatics, editor-in-chief

Michael Gurstein emphasized CI as being concerned with confluence — or the space between — theory, practice, and policy. He stressed the importance “of enabling communities and others to feed-back and feed-forward into strategies for sustainability and supportive regulatory regimes”

(Gurstein, 2004). Rather than drawing from primary documents alone, CI scholars aim to

“conduct research with as opposed to on community networks and users” (Clement et al., 2012, p. 17). CI’s emphasis on putting policy into practice as well as centering the experience of those using technology throughout the research process contrasts top-down policy enacted by governments who are often far away, both in geography and experience, from citizens.

Following the lead of Bakardjieva’s SuperNet study, as well as within the tradition of CI,

I had wanted to conduct focus groups with an attempted representative cross section of citizens by recruiting participants both online and off. I had hoped to gather participants through online media including Twitter, Facebook and email lists, as well as by hanging up posters and being present in physical spaces such as community halls and local libraries. While the realities of in person focus groups during COVID-19 could have been mitigated by hosting meetings using video conference calls, I was hesitant to recruit participants offline and unsure how successful I would be. When finalizing my decision on which participants to include, however, the time and space constraints of completing a master’s thesis were the driving factor. In order to be successful, I opted to narrow the focus to the creation and operation of community networks, which the three interviewees I chose were well placed to speak to. In speaking to network creators within each community does work within the goals of CI, however an expanded research project would benefit from speaking with community members, including those whose technical ability and/or actual online activity are limited. Research that focusses on community

networks through the eyes of users/potential users within the community may provide benefits to both scholars and policy makers, as well as the communities themselves, by coming closer to understanding how these infrastructures are not just created but used. By creating a study that seeks community members who do not use the network(s), ensuring participants are found outside of the network itself, it addresses a common problem of network usage studies: the exclusion of community members who do not use networks because they do not have access.

Conclusion

Within the framework of political economy research, I set out to understand government policies that affect universal access within Canada, and specifically in the communities I studied.

The process of going directly to the primary documents that outlined priorities, policies, and regulations was useful in gathering information about intended government action. The focus of community internet infrastructure within this thesis sparked what felt like a natural decision to speak directly with the people involved in the community projects. The qualitative method of interviewing allows for gathering the experiences of the people who created the networks I analyze in my case studies. While I do also rely on data, such as costs of creating the networks, and revenues, it was my intention to understand the motives of those involved. While some of the interviewees speak to the ease of setting up the network, this was an unexpected finding.

Infrastructure projects can seem intimidating in scope and scale, leading many to shy away from imagining, let alone creating, them. Without the opportunity to ask people about their experiences, I would not have learned this. This area of research would benefit from a follow up project that engaged directly with a wider berth of members within each community, to understand how people used the networks, or not, and to ask them if they saw the networks as having a positive, negative, or no impact on their life. A quantitative project that gathered

information about the percentage of community members that engaged with the networks would also be helpful to understand penetration rates of networks.

Theory

Introduction

The project of reimagining internet infrastructure is one that fits squarely at home in the political economy of communication (PEC). Alternative internet networks, including those run by community members like YYCIX or by municipalities like The Town of Viking Internet

Service and the City of Calgary’s fibre networks, are one solution not only to closing digital divides, but to combatting a communication industry that is dominated by a small number of private companies. Through engagement with theory, as well as quantitative and qualitative research, PEC scholars show that the “the maintenance and deployment of power” in a society is bound up in the interactions within and between the interactions between communication and government institutions as well as the economic structures they reside in (Wasko et al., 2011).

For political economists, communications cannot be fully understood without also looking to the political, economic, and social conditions present, as well as the historical context.

Critical PEC provides a useful framework to study universal access because of its emphasis on public good, its commitment to praxis, and its view that humans influence systems.

If we accept that universal, affordable access to the internet is a public good, but its delivery is left to private providers there is an inherent tension. Incumbent internet service providers commitment to shareholders to maximize their profits, decreases the incentive to connect citizens in ways that will not improve their bottom line. A political economic solution to the problem is government intervention: Things that are considered public goods should be subsidized by wider

society. When it comes to internet access this could mean subsidizes for low-income households to acquire internet service, access to independent or public providers to spectrum, or public access to RoW (Winseck, 2011). Some of these policies are being negotiated or are at play in the case studies I outline below. The end goal of scholarship is not just to declare theories about the world, but to apply those theories to the world, in a way that amplifies public good within society. The belief that structures and systems are not natural phenomenon provides an incentive to act. Within studies of network media economies this can be done through participation in public policy. Below I outline the origins of political economy, the application of it within communication and media studies, and then I look to examples of scholarship within Canada that involves engagement with regulatory bodies in order to maximize the public good of the internet.

Political Economy

Broadly, the tradition of political economy can be traced to British moral philosophers including Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill who sought to explain the rise of capitalism (Weiss,

2018). For political economists, objects of study are not just political or economic, but must be understood through both lenses to understand the context in which phenomena occur. Smith and other classical political economists were concerned over how to balance economic life with state intervention in order to grow markets while advancing the good of society (Wasko et al., 2011).

Traditionally, political economists share four major characteristics: a "strong commitment to historical analysis, to understanding broad social totality, to moral philosophy or the study of social value and of the good social order, and, finally, to social intervention or praxis (Mosco,

1996, p. 17). Vincent Mosco writes that the elimination over time of these concerns resulted in neoclassical economics “or simply, in recognition of its hegemonic position as the orthodoxy, economics” (1996, p. 18). The divide in the framework began as a response to the Smith and his

follower’s view that saw “the individual as the primary unit of analysis, and the market as the primary structure” (Mosco, 1996, p. 18). An early and influential critic of political economy,

Karl Marx, shared Smith’s ethical concern over advancing the good within society but saw the solution as the end of capitalism (Wasko et al., 2011). Mosco writes that a second strain of political economy kept the four concerns at its heart, “even if it meant giving up the goal of creating a positive science” (1996, p. 18). From here, he sees three approaches that emerged:

“conservatives who replaced marketplace individualism with the collective authority of tradition,

Utopian Socialists who accepted classical faith in social intervention but urged putting the community ahead of the market, and Marxian thought which returned labour to the centre of political economy” (1996, p 18). Today’s political economists build on these three.

Political Economy of Communication

Political economy is a way of approaching the study of communication, whether it be content, technologies, or a combination of both, and there is a rich history of scholarship in the field. Mosco traces the North American tradition of the PEC to Dallas Smythe and Herbert

Schiller who drew from both institutionalism and Marxism (1996, p. 19). Their work, and their influence, is “driven more explicitly by a sense of injustice that the communication industry has become an integral part of a wider corporate order which is both exploitative and undemocratic”

(1996, p. 19). In his critique of the field, Phil Graham (2007) identifies the roots of PEC as laying with Canadian Harold Innis’ ‘knowledge monopolies,’ the assertion that “throughout history certain privileged groups (priests, kings, bureaucrats, soldiers, scientists, etc.) have enjoyed a monopoly of access to certain kinds of knowledge” (p. 229). He also points to the

Frankfurt School’s Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno whose work on the cultural industries is foundational for much of the field today, as well as the Harold Lasswell and Edward

Bernays’ ideas around propaganda and the “the political economic implications of new media and their attendant capabilities to change the character and functioning of societies” (p. 229).

Media concentration scholar Dwayne Winseck (2016) has argued that communication research was central in much of political economy thought “long before Smythe, Schiller, Adorno or

Innis” (p. 74). Winseck points to North American and European scholars through the turn of

1900s “saw extended networks of communication and transportation, and the greater mobility of capital, goods, people, knowledge, news and culture they enabled, as central to the then-new age of capitalist modernity” (p. 74). Regardless of where you place the origin of PEC scholars,

Mosco, Graham, and Winseck would all echo claims, like that of Robert W. McCheseny, that the importance of historical grounding is central within the field: current phenomena must be seen as developments within history, rather than in isolation (Schwartz, 2014, p. 182).

When it comes to foundational tenets of PEC, McChesney (2000) writes that there are two main concerns: the interaction between communication and society, and how ownership, profit structures and government policy influence communication. The first dimension “examines how media and communication systems and content reinforce, challenge or influence existing class and social relations,” while the second “emphasizes structural factors and the labour process in the production, distribution and consumption of communication” (McChesney, p. 110). Broadly,

PEC is concerned with studying the often-obscured power structures within communications and society, and how these communication objects and structures interact with the broader socioeconomic structure they operate within. Throughout the field there is an understanding that

“dominant principles, values, and perceptions of power [are] embedded in our technologically mediated interactions” (Mansell, 2004, p. 103). The linking of theory and action, or praxis, manifests throughout PEC work as efforts to “advance public interest concerns before

government regulatory and policy organs” (Mosco, 1996, p. 19). Those in the intellectual tradition of PEC may not share “a singular theoretical perspective or even a sense of community, but an approach to intellectual activity and a conception of the relationship between scholarly imagination and social intervention" (Mosco, 1996, p. 20).

Among critical political economists of media there is a debate about the field itself, the theoretical approaches it draws from, and the objects of study within it. Dwayne Winseck writes that there is a tendency to see PEC as being the domain of Marxist scholars (2011, 2016). He points to German sociologist Christian Fuchs who has written that ‘the political economy of the media is Marxist Political Economy’,” (2016, p. 74; citing Fuchs, 2012). While Fuchs (2012) does not seem to replace one with the other within the work Winseck references, he does call for a renewed focus on Marxism within communication studies. Fuchs uses Smythe’s ‘Blindspot of

Western Marxism’ (1977), which urges a revival of a Marxist political economy of communication, as a jumping off point to assert that contemporary scholars who are concerned with a just world, must heed the calls of Smythe and utilize a Marxist theory of media and communication (Fuchs, p. 693). Fuchs (2012) also champions approaches within both critical theory and critical PEC, where “there has been with different weightings a focus on aspects of media commodification, audiences, ideology and alternatives,” writing that rather then being in conflict, the two approaches “are complementary and should be combined” (p. 734). Influential

PEC scholar Janet Wasko (2004) writes that while some communication scholars draw on institutional political economy, which “focuses on technological and institutional factors that influence markets” (p. 310), that when one refers to PEC “a radical, critical, or Marxian political economy is likely the tradition that is represented” (2004, p. 310). In his own writing, Winseck

(2016) points to other authors, including McChesney (2008), Holt and Perren (2009), and Mosco

(1996, 2009) that see PEC as constituting a single field (2011, p. 16). Winseck writes that Mosco includes a wide variety of approaches but concludes that “the main lines of development are variations on Marxist political economy” (p. 74). This oversimplification is a mistake, not because Marxist PEC approaches don’t offer value, but because they are partial in their analysis of communications and “tend to rely on an overly unified view of the media” (Winseck, 2016, p.

94).

Mosco takes up the project of looking within PEC in The Political Economy of

Communication (1996, 2009). While PEC scholars are often successful in their efforts to practice praxis, it has meant there is “a tendency to look outward into the world” rather than examining the discipline itself (Mosco, 1996, p. 136). Mosco (1996) works to put forward a theory of knowledge for PEC that does not dismiss determinism, but acknowledges that there is a tendency within PEC, with its focus on structures, to “oversimplify the dynamic, complex, and often non- linear relationships that comprise a social totality” (p. 137). Mosco offers mutual constitution as a helpful epistemological reimagining for PEC. Mutual constitution captures the dynamic nature within PEC objects of study, where “no thing is fully formed or clearly defined, but one can specify the process at work within and between them” (p 138). Mosco adopts three ‘entry points,’ which he says are co-constitutive with each other as well as other phenomena in society: commodification, spatialization, and structuration (p. 138). With this less essentialist ontology, which Mosco sees as a move outward, the discipline will be strengthened, and able to "confront the challenges posed by the major perspectives on its borders, namely policy studies and cultural studies” (p. 139).

In Winseck’s 2016 article Reconstructing the Political Economy of Communication for the

Digital Media Age he too works to address what he sees as the weaknesses of PEC. Important for

his project is recovering aspects of communication studies within political economy before its rise in popularity in the mid-twentieth century, as well as the institutionalist and cultural industries schools he sees as being neglected by the equally important Marxist strains of PEC

(2011). While Winseck and Mosco share similar goals to reinvigorate PEC by incorporating aspects of what they see as schools on the edge of the discipline, Winseck (2016) faults Mosco for “substitute[ing] an overly unified view of the processes of capitalist integration for a unified structural view of the media” (p. 94, emphasis original). Mosco’s effort also discards media and communication industries as objects of analysis (2011; 2016). The tendency for Marxist PEC scholars to focus on ideology comes at the expense of the media as the focus of study, according to Winseck. The focus of PEC on the Marxist tradition also misses the contributions of liberal political economists like Yochai Benkler, and engagement with similar work by scholars including Tim Wu, Lawrence Lessig, and Susan Crawford whose work “hardly ever figures in the accounts of critical PEC scholars except as a foil (a supposed reservoir of internet exceptionalism and technotopian views) against which critical PEC scholars aim to set things right” (Winseck, 2016, p. 96).

Political Economy of Communication: A Framework of Ideas

Winseck (2016) lays out a classification of the different strains of theories of political economy of communications as part of his ongoing effort to dispute the “impoverished view of

[PECs] past and contemporary contributions” (p. 96). The framework is helpful in the context of this thesis as it includes a wider context of PEC scholarship from critical, or Marxist, based PEC, to institutionalists, such as Canadian economist Harold Innis whose impact on Canadian communications theory looms large, as well as more liberal brands of PEC, including many who write about the internet and fibre infrastructure whose work I draw from. Importantly, beyond

what is discussed above, one aspect all “theories of media political economy” include is that

“information and communication are ‘strange commodities’ or, in the language of neoclassical economics, public goods” (Winseck, 2011, p. 12). Beyond that, Winseck (2011) outlines four perspectives: neoclassical economics, radical media political economy, Schumpeterian institutional political economy, and the cultural industries (p. 16).

Winseck (2011) starts by outlining neoclassical approaches, which can be summed up by early concepts of free markets, free speech, and the “the marketplace of ideas” (pp. 16-17). A defining difference between the conservative and liberal branches of the neoclassical school of thought is how much and when the state should intervene. While both see a limited role, liberals are more likely to see a role for government in providing public goods, including “bringing a small number of essential services to areas not served by private business (e.g. broadband internet to rural communities)” (Winseck, 2011, p. 17). Liberals see the need for the state in order to “strike a balance between the public good qualities of information versus protecting its status as valuable property,” while “conservative economists are likely to stress the need for strong government intervention to protect private property rights in information” (Winseck,

2011, p. 17). A feature of information, writes Winseck (2011), is the increased value it has the wider its spread, unlike traditional commodities whose value decreases with use: Information is a public good because after the high cost of producing the first copy of information is absorbed, the subsequent cost of reproducing, transmitting, and storing it declines quickly to zero— qualities that have been amplified greatly by digital communication technologies (p. 17).

Winseck (2011) sees the second group being “Radical media political economies: the monopoly capital and digital capitalism schools” that share the rejection of the “neoclassical claim to being a ‘value-free’ science” (p. 21). Thinkers who subscribe to radical media political

economies place “greater emphasis on the ‘public good’ characteristics” of media and information. This school of thought sees democracies as being enriched by information, as citizens are more knowledgeable (Winseck, 2011).

Winseck labels the third section of political economists of media as “Creative destruction: Schumpeterian institutional political economy, the creative industries school, and network political economy” (p. 25). These schools draw from Austrian political economist

Joseph Schumpeter, and contrast “the neoclassical and radical views in four substantial ways,” according to Winseck (2011):

1. “Technological innovation is the motor of competition in capitalist economies, not price

and markets, as neoclassical economists hold” (p. 25).

2. Competition through technological innovation creates temporary monopolies and

superprofits, but these are likely to be short lived because “superprofits” attract new

rivals (p. 25).

3. “Creative destruction,” the opening of new markets “‘revolutionizes the economic

structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new

one’,” is the central force of capitalism (Winseck, p. 26; citing Schumpeter 1943/1996, p.

83).

4. Schumpeter rejects the notion that citizens (neoclassical) or social forces (radicals) are

the ‘agents’ of change, instead technology and economics drive society (p. 26).

The ideas of Ronald Coase enriched Schumpeter’s views, adding “that changes in the information environment lead to changes in the organizational structure of firms and markets.

Information that is scarce and costly creates bureaucratic hierarchies” (Winseck, 2011, p. 26). In terms of the value of information, or copyright, the interests of large media industry players such

as telecommunications and content providers are divided. It is in the interests of content industries to extract additional value from each audience who consumes the specific information they provide, whereas telecommunications providers earn profit by the increased consumption of content – no matter what that content is (Winseck, 2011). If audiences must pay for each bit of content they consume, as is more likely in a copyright maximalist framework, there is decreased incentive to use telecommunications services. Though telecoms may side with “fans, hackers, and activists” in this regard, they are “deeply at odds with the same groups over issues of network neutrality, open source code, privacy, and so forth” (Winseck, 2011, p. 28).

Finally, Winseck (2011) labels the last category of political economy of media theorists as the “mutations: cultural industries” which draw aspects from the other three frameworks (p.

29). One tenant central to cultural industries thinkers is that cultural industries – which they divide into “’publishing’ (e.g. books, music, film), ‘flow’ (e.g. broadcasting), and ‘editorial’ (e.g. the press)” (p. 30) – have essential differences, and must be studied with those differences in mind. The free culture norm advanced by some cultural industries political economists “cultivate audiences’ expectations that content is free” (Winseck, 2011, p. 31). Instead of this being a new way of thinking, its rooted in the “the enduring ‘sociocultural fact’ that information and cultural products are public goods as well as more than a century of socialization by the flow model where most of the costs of media consumption were paid by someone else” (Winseck, 2011, p.

31; citing Bustamante 2004: 811).

Monopoly Capital School, The Public Good, and Praxis

The monopoly capital school takes its name from the 1966 book of letters between

Marxist economists Paul Sweezy and Paul A. Baran, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the

American Economic and Social Order. Sweezy, a Harvard economist who founded socialist

magazine the Monthly Review, and Baran, an economist at Stanford, wrote about the evolution of American capitalism during the mid-twentieth century (Buhle, 2018). The work outlined the

“dominance of monopolistic accumulation at the center of the system meant that the whole nature of competition under capitalism had been altered, taking on the form of oligopolistic rivalry” (Foster, 2016, p. 2). The situation Sweezy and Baran described may sound familiar to

Canadian PEC studying the telecommunications industry: “The typical firm was not a price taker but a price maker. Genuine price competition or price wars of the kind that would destabilize the co-respective relations between oligopolistic enterprises was effectively banned” (Foster, 2016, p. 2). Their influence is worth noting in this paper not just for their prescient insights into the modern Canadian internet market, but also for their commitment to praxis. For the economists,

“the main point was not simply to understand the world, but to change it” (Foster, 2016, p. 22).

The pair influenced Smythe and Schiller, as well as Mosco, Wasko, McChesney, Winseck, and a host of other critical PEC scholars who share a commitment to public engagement.

Robert McChesney, a leading contemporary figure of the monopoly capital school, analyzes media ownership (1999, 2008), the relationship between journalism, democracy, and capitalism (1999, 2008, 2010, 2014), and internet policy (2013). In Digital Disconnect,

McChesney (2013) deflates ideas that the internet will revolutionize citizens access to information, leading to a more robust democracy. He writes that “the internet is the ultimate public good and is ideally suited for broad social development” (p. 227). It also has the potential to inject the status quo with new life as the new markets it opens up allows for the growth capitalism demands, however it also amplifies the tension detailed by Baran and Sweezy of

“what a society could produce and what it actually does produce under capitalism” (p. 227).

While the internet has great potential to recreate our socioeconomic system, instead we see the

monopolistic tendencies of traditional media recreated within the internet ecosystem. As of 2013,

“internet firms comprise[d] one half of the thirty largest firms in U.S.” (p. 222). McChesney’s work, both academic and in his practice, rejects technological determinist notions the internet will shape society itself, whether that be to reinforce the strength of capitalism or to create a more robust democracy. In the spirit of Babe and other critical PECs, he writes that “the internet and the broader digital revolution are not inexorably determined by technology; they are shaped by how society elects to develop them” (p. 216). McChesney believes in the possibility of reforming the internet as a public good (p. 221). That will require reimaging a new political economy, and he see the provision of internet access and the building of community networks as two central aspects of that change (p. 231).

‘Political Problem, Political Solutions’

Central to the work of political economists, including American media studies scholar

Victor Pickard, is the concern with maximizing public interest: “if you understand something as a public good, it must be preserved, regardless of market forces” (Pickard, 2011, 10:30).

Scholars in this field subscribe to the idea that a healthy democracy requires not only the right, but the ability, to share in the cultural of society, as well as the ability to access the public commons (Murdock, 2011). The subtitle for this section, “political problem, political solutions," comes from McChesney’s 2004 work where he outlines that media structures are not natural phenomena, but exist within structures built and maintained by people:

Media systems of one sort of another are going to exist, and they do not fall from the sky. The policies, structures, subsidies, and institutions that are created to control, direct, and regulate the media will be responsible for the logic and nature of the media system. (2004, p. 16.)

By recognizing that these structures are man made, opportunities for intervention become available. As discussed in the literature review section of this paper, Babe’s 1990 book

Telecommunications in Canada: Technology, Industry, and Government details the history of communications in Canada, from the telegraph and railroad, to the beginning of fibre optics that is beginning to take hold as he writes. The key factors, both for my work — and, Babe would argue, for policy makers and anyone looking to understand telecommunications — are not the details of each deployment and adoption of different technologies, but the patterns of myth that underlie each. Babe identifies three main myths that often influence how technology and industry are regulated, and he works to dispel each one. The first is technological nationalism, which he describes as “nationhood through deployment of industrial devices” (p. 6). The second is technological dependence, which he sees as the dual narratives of technological imperative and technological determinism. For Babe, the technological imperative is the lens through which advancing technology is at the heart of the ever-coveted march of progress, and technological determinism is the lens through which all other aspects of human society, culture, politics, beliefs, can be explained by technology. He identifies the third myth as technology and industrial structuring, which includes allowing technology to determine how sectors, or certain industries are structured.

At the heart of each myth is the idea of technology being out of our control, rather than something that humans make, allow, and decide how to regulate. By identifying and dispelling these underlying myths, Babe intends to put the responsibility for outcomes back onto actors within society. Perhaps the most interesting line in the book is when Babe writes that by laying myths “to rest, it follows that future cultural, political, and social consequences ensuing from applications of industrial technique should be ascribed to human agents, not some autonomous,

impersonal process” (1990, p. 14). Babe’s thesis that policy shapes our communication systems

(as opposed to those changes being inevitable), is helpful to have in mind while doing work about how Canadians are able (or not) to participate in policy process, and how those process will affect outcomes. Babe’s reminder to call into question assumed narratives to expose myths, and his own resulting claim that humans are the driving force behind technology and its outcomes, not the other way around, informed my thinking about our current telecommunication environment. While Albertans face high prices for internet access, where they have access at all, it doesn’t have to be that way. By exposing the myth that the way it is now is the way it has to be, we can look to other solutions. The case studies of community networks discussed below are examples of citizens and municipalities shifting into the role of actors in their quest to access affordable, high-quality internet service.

The arguments put forward by Winseck (1995b, 2011, 2016), Mosco (1996), McChesney

(2004, 2013), Babe (1990) and others discussed above are helpful in countering hegemonic, pro- industry narratives that are common to regulatory proceedings in Canada and around the world.

In their work on network neutrality in 2013, Jonathan E. Nuechterlein and Philip J. Weiser seek to penetrate what they see as the “absolutist rhetoric [that] often eclipses nuance in this debate”

(pg. 197). The authors provide a clear account of the technical aspects of network neutrality, yet their choice not to engage with the political, economic, and societal factors that are embedded within and surrounding the technology is itself a commitment to ideology. The text exemplifies what Winseck referred to as the “collapse of public policy and regulation into the exclusive discourse of economics and technology” (p. 15). While Nuechterlein and Weiser do a service to policy readers by clearly explaining the history and function of telecommunications technologies, they use these same technology-based descriptions to perform neutrality. By

relying on the narrative of the technology itself, however, they miss an important part of the story: “Cultural, political, and social consequences ensuing from applications of industrial technique should be ascribed to human agents, not some autonomous, impersonal process”

(Babe, 1990, pg. 14). Explaining the nuances of how technologies work should not replace the underlying human motivations that led to these processes, and the resulting impacts on the public interest.

The emergence of network neutrality as an idea to reclaim the “core concerns of open access advocates” (2013, p. 197) by using the engineering concept of end-to-end design,

Nuechterlein and Weiser write that advocates like Tim Wu and Lawrence Lessig were engaging in “populist advocacy” (2013, p. 197) that misunderstood the tech. They write: “No one familiar with engineering realities would seriously argue that all IP networks should always be oblivious to the types of content contained in IP packets” (p. 197). Yet this characterization of net neutrality advocates dismisses the social concerns at the heart of their argument, flattening their description of reality into a debate about the nuances of the technology itself.

Similarly, a popular 2000 policy paper by Robert W. Crandall and Thomas W. Hazlett takes the view that regulation is inherently harmful in their discussion of the ban on the ‘Baby

Bells’ – the regional telephone companies created in the wake of the antitrust case that broke up

AT&T (Wu, 2011) – to participate fully in long distance markets. The authors cite an “annual increase in consumer welfare at a 1.1 cent per minute reduction in interstate residential rates is

$1.2 billion" (p. 13-14), pointing to comments submitted to the FCC by Crandall and fellow economist Jeffrey Rohlfs, who acted on behalf of American incumbent telecommunications firms the year before this piece was published (p. 28). “Blocking competition,” they write, “has incurred substantial social costs” (p. 14). A political economic reading however offers a different

view. In a 1995 call to action, Winseck wrote: “We can begin to counter developments in regulatory policy that try to collapse all discussions into the categories of economic growth and technological innovation, and lately, competitiveness without considering the implications of regulatory policy in terms of equity, public life, and democratic processes” (p. 158).

Conclusion

Communication architectures do not operate in a vacuum, existing power dynamics impact and influence each new introduction of technology. PEC scholars reminder to draw on the history of communications legislation to inform the present, is a good reminder for my own research on alternative internet networks in the 2020s. PEC scholars view communications as an object of study that is situated in a wider context, with political, economic, and social structures all interacting and influencing communications. The field holds normative views on the world, inserting morality and their values into their research. While there is still a commitment to academic rigour and challenging ones own assumptions, scholars do not see themselves as separate from the worlds in which they study. In addition to research, PEC scholars are also dedicated to applying that research in the interest of the public good. There is an ethical consideration to participate within the ‘real world,’ to attempt to have an impact on the lives of fellow citizens.

Praxis Through Policy

Rejecting ‘Is-ism’

While universal access to affordable, high-quality internet access is still lacking in

Canada (CRTC, 2020a), the enaction of regulation that prioritizes the public interest will help achieve it. This is evident in Babe (1990) and American internet policy researcher and advocate

Lawrence Lessig (2006)’s rejection of a technological deterministic view of the internet being out of human’s control. The internet ecosystem that exists today is a direct result of the Federal

Communication Commission (FCC) in the United States turning to deregulation and reliance on competition over government action (Wu, 2010). Policy in Canada followed suit in the national telecommunications market of the 1970s with “liberalization and privatization, [which were] to be followed later by deregulation” (Klass, 2015, p. 49). That regulations, and the internet itself, must remain as it is “is the fallacy of ‘is-ism’ — the mistake of confusing how something is with how it must be” (Lessig, 2006, p. 32). Debunking “first-generation thinking” (p. 31) on cyberspace, Lessig writes that “we should expect, and demand, that it can be made to reflect any set of values that we think important” (p. 32).

Telecommunications policy that prioritizes citizens begins with foregrounding the question of “whose information society?” (Hepworth & Robbins, 1988). As the computer networking matured from the United States Department of Defence-funded Advanced Research

Projects Agency network (ARPANet) to early consumer networks like CompuServe (Ceruzzi,

2012), “politicians, futurologists, advertising agencies, and public relations experts” began to

extoll the ‘utopian’ prospects of future communication infrastructures (Hepworth & Robbins,

1988, p. 323). Grounding developments in a historical context, Mark Hepworth and Kevin

Robbins were skeptical new technologies would equalize knowledge and, consequently, lead to a more equitable society, arguing that new technologies follow the path of existing technologies and reinforce existing power structures. To illustrate their argument, they used data to show the penetration rates of telephone use, home video recorders, and home computers as not being spread equally throughout society (1988). Concerns around information equality are not new

(Innis,1950; Schiller, 1986). The knowledge that new technologies often replicate existing inequalities within society (see Eubanks, 2017; Hicks, 2018; Noble, 2018) should be central to the decision making of regulators entrusted with acting in the public interest. Through understanding technologies as part of the political, economic, and social contexts they exist within, we can make policy that addresses existing inequities. By rejecting the technological determinism put forward by scholars like Marshall McLuhan (1964), and focussing on agency, policy can mitigate the likelihood of replicating extant inequalities (Babe, 1990; Lessig, 2006).

‘It Is Not Enough to Write Books"

McChesney shares the PEC commitment to engaging in the practice that his work advocates for. In 2003 he cofounded the Free Press, a nonpartisan organization and citizen lobby group that works to engage the public and advocates for universal internet service, public media, and diverse media ownership (Free Press, 2020). In light of his scholarship, McChesney (2004) writes that “when one argues that the corporate media system is deeply flawed and a barrier to a decent and humane society and that the solution to the problem of the media is increased public participation, it is not enough to write books" (p. 12). His commitment to public participation

extended into acts of journalism, including hosting a radio show, Media Matters, on public media for a decade (WILL-AM Radio, 2012) and writing in newspapers.

McChesney practice of scholarship and praxis holds special resonance for me through its connection to my own lived experience. I strongly believe in the potential of public media to contribute to a more just society, and this led me to work in public broadcasting. Through that work, at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and other outlets, I was driven to engage with my own local community through the production of news. With a focus in online journalism, I became concerned with the unequal ways in which people had access to local news, hindering their ability to participate meaningfully in the world around them. To participate in finding and implementing solutions to the problem I saw, I left journalism to work at a digital rights non- profit OpenMedia. As the leader for our access to the internet portfolio I led engagement efforts to connect citizens to regulatory bodies, including the CRTC, as well as acted as a lobbyist and advocate for universal broadband. While my work was primarily centred in Canada, I engaged with policy in the United States, especially around network neutrality. Through that work I was heavily involved with the Free Press via partnerships involving online citizen awareness campaigns, developing policy, and in-person, helping to lead a walk out protest at a Federal

Communications Commission’s meeting (Kroin, 2017) over Chairman Ajit Pai’s efforts to repeal the Open Internet Order, which was seen as a hallmark protection of network neutrality (Federal

Communications Commission, 2015). I share the values of OpenMedia and McChesney’s Free

Press around commitment to public advocacy, citizen engagement, and the belief that universal, affordable access to the internet will make for a better society. Those values are what led me to write this thesis. The opportunity to engage with the scholarship of McChesney, and many PEC scholars, especially colleagues and mentors in Canada, is both inspiring and an honour.

Scholarly Policy Participation: Contemporary Canadian Examples

Communication policy has the tendency to reflect the evidence of those who have the resources to participate (Blais, 2016). Writing just after the Telecommunications Act was implemented in 1993 (Government of Canada), Winseck (1995b) sought to counter what he saw as the narrative that the new act, and the arrival of new technologies, would shift policy in a

‘radical’ new direction. Instead, the period was driven by a rise of ‘industrial policy,’ that solidified the relationship between industry and the state while supplanting the public interest, which “displaces contemporary concepts of democratic politics, communication, and citizenship” (p. 83). The rise of deregulation and the new regulatory regime of led to less opportunities for civil society organizations to intervene, and the option for the CRTC not to include them, despite such groups’ “valuable contributions to the regulatory proceedings, especially with respect to principles relating to access, cost, and universal services” (Winseck,

1995b, p. 87). The move affirmed Habermas’ (1973) assertion of the public sphere’s susceptibility to being coopted by the interests of capitalism and endangered the future of universal service obligations for telephone access (Winseck, 1995b).

In an article about who holds power within the Canadian telecommunications landscape

Winseck (1995b) builds on the work of Schiller (1986) and Babe (1990), highlighting the increased divides between the informational privileged and information impoverished and works to make visible the historical evidence that new technologies reinforce existing power structures, writing that “the purpose of new technologies” is to extend “commercial relations to greater areas of social life” (p. 82). Winseck also highlights the importance of the idea of the ‘citizen’ versus the ‘consumer,’ and how that relates to the rights and privileges of each. The article is an illuminating look at policy realities of another era, which provides a historical perspective, as

well as an opportunity to ask ‘what if’ in regard to the context of the deregulation of the era just prior to the explosion of home internet use in the early to mid-1990s.

Nearly three decades later, the federal government is again in the process of modernize its existing legislation and has launched the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative

Review (BTLR) (Heritage Canada, 2018). Television content that was once broadcast over limited airwaves, for example, is now being delivered into the home through telecommunications infrastructure as signals change from analog to digital, writes communication and spectrum policy researcher Gregory Taylor (2013). Television’s switch to digital “indicates many wider issues facing contemporary structures of media governance” (p. 150). As the boundaries between technologies disappear, with more services being delivered over the same wire, Canada is one of many nations considering the structure of regulation. In the tradition of looking to the past to understand the present, the changes in other forms of media, including how broadcasting policy has evolved in Canada, offers lessons for telecommunications policy. In a 2019 presentation to the Senate, Taylor suggested lawmakers not let the ‘newness’ of changing technology be the main impetus for revamped laws. He warned of the “‘end of broadcasting’ rhetoric that can permeate debates such regarding the future of media” while Netflix and other streaming services are a ‘broadcasting’ success story (2019, p. 2)

The Senate also heard from Winseck and University of Ottawa law professor Michael

Geist, whose recommendations were centred around universal service; this time around internet, not telephone, access (Geist, 2018; Winseck, 2018; Standing Senate Committee on Transport and

Communications, 2018a). The two argue that the internet should be dealt with as the multi- faceted, multi-purposed platform it is, rather than imposing existing broadcast regulations upon it. According to Geist, “while it may be true that the broadcasting system is (or will soon be) the

internet, the internet is not the broadcasting system” (Geist, 2018). Similarly, Winseck saw the continued separation of the Broadcast Act and Telecommunications Act as a priority thereby allowing for nuanced regulation tailored to the specifics of the situation, instead of forcing a broadcast policy on the internet or vice versa (Winseck, 2018). Concerns of equal access to communications systems, power dynamics, and media ownership foregrounded by Geist and

Winseck elucidate normative convictions of justice, equality, and the belief that a ‘better’ world is possible – carrying on the tradition of communications scholarship in Canada, as outlined by

Babe (2000).

Both academics also called for support for content creators online, with Winseck calling for an increase in support for Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC, and independent journalism, and Geist calling for continued competition through common carriage for Canadian creators to continue to flourish online. This prioritization of ensuring Canadian content is protected echoes the nationalism Babe writes about, especially in relation to Grant. That Canada’s culture must be protected to stand against the United States. Babe (1990) quibbles with arguments rooted in

‘technological nationalism’ that Canadian communications infrastructure helps to reinforce a national identity. Instead, he writes that Canada’s national identity persists despite our communications infrastructure, which connects us to the United States through physical networks, content, and the trans-national roots of major communications companies, such as

“Bell Canada, even today this country’s largest telephone company, [which did not] fully extricate itself from U.S. control until the mid-1970s” (Babe, 1990, p. 8). The emphasis on ensuring strong supports for Canadian content, while also calling for equal access for all content speaks to the duality Babe sees as central to the dialectics of Canadian thought. The focus of

Geist and Winseck on mass media and mediation, the political economy, a normative view of

how things ‘should’ be, and policy prescriptions are all hallmarks of Canadian communication

thought (Babe, 1990).

Taylor, Winseck and Geist’s participation is not unique for contemporary Canadian

communication scholars (Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, 2018a,

2018b). Despite barriers to engagement, researchers can routinely be found advocating for the

public interest in regulatory processes. Rob McMahon, Heather Hudson and Lyle Fabian (2013)

explain the challenges faced by marginalized communities in influencing policy in a paper

detailing a CRTC hearing that was held in Inuvik and Whitehorse, NWT to address

telecommunications issues facing those in Canada’s north. The hearing clarified challenges

facing indigenous and marginalized groups in terms of universal access as multiple connectivity

challenges arose. The process was beneficial for community, independent industry groups, and

the First Mile Connectivity Consortium, a national non-profit association of Indigenous

technology organizations. The Consortium organized around advocating for “rural and remote

user communities to generate and operate their own digital networks and applications” (2013, p.

234), to become familiar with the regulatory process. Because of this participation, CRTC

commissioners and senior staffers were made aware of existing indigenous connectivity methods

and providers, that were already benefiting communities up north, and the added benefit of

showing this type of model is possible. An outcome of the proceedings was that the CRTC

decided to re-regulate retail internet in the north, as well as to hold a public hearing into satellite

internet (McMahon et al., 2013). The positive outcomes described showcase what can be

achieved when the public is able to participate in policy making in a meaningful way.

Participation in regulatory hearings does not come without challenges, and it is not available in the same ways for everyone to participate. Sandra Smeltzer and Shade (2015) wrote

about the barriers to practice activism or advocacy — the pair are careful to draw a distinction between the two, defining activism as being more political and adversarial to entrenched power structures, whereas they define advocacy as being more on the side of facilitation, and lobbying power structures (2015, p. 14) — while being an academic. The article was published following their workshop on activism and communication scholarship in Canada. They point to the reality of working in neo-liberal universities where there are strong expectations around publishing often, and that support of a faculty for doing this type of activism/advocacy work is crucial, though very uneven across institutions, faculties, and for different scholars within faculties.

Another hurdle they point to is familial obligations, like taking care of children and the elderly, which can have severe gender implications. As well, they point to how those with tenure are more able to participate in this type of work. All these factors lead to discrepancies over who can do activism/advocacy work “off the side of their plate” which can lead to strengthening existing power dynamics, instead of a multiplicity of voices, including those in marginal communities

(Smeltzer & Shade, 2015). They underscore the benefits reported by academics of being involved in a larger community and knowing that this type of work is values by peers. This integration in the community, however, can be difficult to navigate as researchers faced with already limited time constraints (Shepherd, et al., 2014). These considerations are helpful when researching how and why academics chose to participate, or not, in regulatory processes, like those held at the

CRTC.

Canadian communications scholars Tamara Shepherd, Catherine Middleton, and Taylor

write about the experience of participating as an academics in telecommunications policy in

Canada (Shepherd et al., 2014). They contrast two experiences, one with Industry Canada (now

ISED) and one with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. The

article sheds light on the challenges of advocacy within academia. They work to define the

‘public interest’ or ‘public good,’ a theme central to literature on policy and political economy.

The authors delineate the concept as “closely working with the values of equality and citizenship within a democracy” (p. 2). By participating in ongoing public policy debates research is

“directly confronted by reality and the test of relevance” (p. 18).

Conclusion

These examples are a small handful amongst Canadian scholars working to inform policy at the national level. To counter industrial policy within communications regulation the public debate needs to include more than just university faculty. Efforts to work alongside communities

(McMahon et al., 2014), to coordinate with and learn from broader civil society (Shepherd et al.,

2014), and acknowledging researchers with less personal and professional resources face larger obstacles (Smeltzer & Shade, 2015) are as essential as research-based interventions alone.

The Alberta Advantage?

Introduction

Considering current infrastructure projects led by governments, as well as their impact, is timely with the potential shifts happening in the national telecommunications policy landscape, such as BTLR (Heritage Canada, 2018). Despite changing technologies, stated priorities of policymakers remain the same: “Universal access to high-quality and affordable telecommunications services has never been more important” (ISED, 2018a), while “broadband high-speed internet continues to lag behind for certain population groups in Canada, notably communities in rural and remote areas” (Office of the Auditor General of Canada, 2018). In perhaps a shift from the commitments to universal service from IHAC and NBFT, the CRTC’s

2016 ‘basic service’ decision places high-speed internet in the same category as clean drinking water, electricity, and voice phone service, and carries with it funding obligations to ensure high- speed broadband access across Canada, under section 46.5 of the Telecommunications Act

(ISED, 2018b; Telecommunications Act, 1993). In addition, the federal government released a their connectivity strategy in 2019 (ISED), with the intention to “connect some of our must rural and remote communities — many of which are Indigenous” (ISED, 2018c). While considering if that strategy should include government-funded infrastructure it is pertinent to look at existing publicly funded infrastructure, such as the internet backbone built by Alberta. Amidst renewed

commitments from the federal government to address digital divides, what lessons can be learned from the country’s largest publicly funded internet infrastructure project?

Provincial Backbone: Alberta SuperNet

With the emergence of the internet into homes in the 1990s, the federal government grappled with how best to benefit from the explosion of the world wide web, launching multiple federal-led inquiries including the Information Highway Advisory Council in the mid 1990s and the National Broadband Task Force in 2001 (Government of Canada, 2004; Mitchell, 2003;

National Broadband Task Force, 2001). Albertans, however, were not content to wait for federal action, and in 2000 the province announced it would build the SuperNet, a provincial fibre-optic internet backbone that would be open access (Government of Alberta, n.d.; Kozak, 2014). An internet backbone is the main connection infrastructure that allows smaller networks to connect to each other. The internet, or internetwork, is the inter-connection of different networks — the backbone is what links them together. This includes the undersea cables that connect the continents (Starosielski, 2015), it includes the main pathways in North America, many of which go thru the United States, and it includes the networks of Canada’s biggest telecommunications providers, like Bell, Telus, Rogers, and Shaw.

The SuperNet was deployed in the early 2000s, a project of Service Alberta (Cybera,

2016). When finished in 2005, the network included points of presence into 429 communities, including 4,200 schools, libraries, hospitals, and government offices (Taylor Warwick

Consulting Limited, 2016). What the SuperNet did not do was extend from the main point in the community, to each home. That so-called ‘last mile’ was to be built by private internet service providers, or the communities themselves. This last step commercial model allowed for competition of different carriers — a marketplace solution which was thought by many to be a

benefit. As a public-private partnership, the internet backbone was owned by the province, but run by two private companies. Bell ran the ‘base area network,’ the central corridor of the province, connecting Calgary to Edmonton, with the two major cities serving as hubs. From

Calgary, it extends south to Lethbridge, east to Drumheller and extending southeast to Medicine

Hat. From Edmonton, the network spokes out south to Camrose, northwest to Grand Prairie, northeast to Fort McMurray, and east to Cold Lake, Lloydminster, and Wainwright (Service

Alberta, 2020) (See Appendix, figure 1). Calgary-based Axia ran the ‘extended area network’ connecting smaller communities to the network until September 2018, when the Government of

Alberta (GoA) awarded the contract to Bell Canada (BCE Inc., 2018). According to the original agreements, the SuperNet was open access: all service providers would be able to lease wholesale access to the network. The two network operators, Bell and Axia, were not to offer retail service. Eventually, Axia created a subsidiary, Axia Connect, offering service to communities, which caused controversy over perceived conflicts of interest (Zajko, 2017): Now that Axia could offer service as well as operating the infrastructure the structural separation model, separating providers from network operators, lines were blurred. For communities considering building their own infrastructure, what would happen to their venture if Axia came in and offered service? Under the new contract, Bell now owns the extended area network, “but the GoA has an indefeasible right-of-use (IRU) covering the asset and retains the option to buy it back for $1 when the IRU expires in 2035” (Taylor Warwick Consulting Limited, 2016, p. 59).

The SuperNet model has been proposed as a solution to the lack of competition in

Canada’s communication sector (Middleton, 2011). The model of having the infrastructure and the service of the internet divorced from each other — what is known as “structural separation”

— as a way to break up Canada’s telecom oligopolies and force them to offer better prices. As

well as providing connections to government facilities, the SuperNet was intended to sell wholesale access to smaller retail companies that turn around and provide service to homes and businesses. One impact of the SuperNet is its effect early on at driving network speeds within the province. Addressing the SuperNet in 2013, Rajabiun and Middleton wrote:

While there is some controversy about the structure of Alberta's approach and the application of open access rules on the edge of the SuperNet, it is evident that the pace of progress in internet connectivity improvements has been substantially above average. (p. 712) In recent years, however, speed measurement data shows the province is lagging provinces which show higher levels of competition in the broadband sector (Rajabiun & McKelvey 2018;

CRTC, 2019a). The impact of the network on overall affordability of broadband service in the province, as opposed to other jurisdictions, is equally unclear. While structural separation models have led lower prices in jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom (Middleton, 2011), that isn’t always the case. As the only provincial internet backbone in Canada, one might expect to find lower prices for landline internet in Alberta, however, service remains on par, or more expensive, than in comparable jurisdictions (CRTC, 2019a). The effect on penetration rates in the province are also on par with other provinces (CRTC, 2019a).

The project has had tangible benefits including allowing for Cybera, an Albertan non- profit, to rent space off the network to provide high-speed access to universities and every K-12 school across the province (Service Alberta, n.d.). Despite this, Cybera’s former chief executive officer Robin Winsor has called the network “vastly under-realized and under-utilized” (CRTC,

2014a, para. 1320). The project was spearheaded by the province’s long-reigning Conservative government, which saw the infrastructure project as a “contract to be adhered to rather than a policy to create a communication media and communities of use” (Kozak, 2010). A prominent

criticism of the SuperNet is its sub-optimal deployment, which some scholars see as a function of the lack of communication between the province and the communities the SuperNet connects.

Many scholars have argued that the dream of the Alberta SuperNet did not materialize to its full potential (Bakardjieva & Williams, 2010; Kozak, 2010, 2014; Mitchell, 2003; Williams, 2010).

One researcher chalked the lack of input throughout the process up to a fundamental misconception of the project from the start that saw users’ “role based on consumption. Rather than being active participants in the network’s conception, the province’s organizations and people are the consumers of the network, its advantages, and its problems” (Kozak, 2010, p. 54).

Williams and Bakardjieva (2010) interviewed key government officials and policy planners for the project after the fact and many expressed disappointments that businesses did not take the lead in connecting the SuperNet to individual homes and businesses. Writing about the gap between the “techno-optimism” of policy planners and the “disenchantment” of actual adoption rates (p. 162), Bakardjieva and Williams concluded that “little consideration was given to the possibility of engaging rural citizens in communicative interaction, of tapping into their situated knowledges and hearing their messages” (p. 171). The Alberta Minister responsible for the project even told the academics he regretted that millions of taxpayer dollars had “gone to die”

(Bakardjieva & Williams, 2010). There was a lack of public consultation with actual Albertans who would be using the network and once completed, there was no public information campaign about how and why communities could make use of it (Bakardjieva & Williams, 2010; Kozak,

2010, 2014). In a 2007 study, Bakardjieva spoke with participants in four different Albertan communities to “explore how rural community members made sense of the SuperNet as a communication technology in the context of their practices and perceived needs and against the background of their existing experience of internet use” (p. 1). While the SuperNet extends into

the communities, it is up to incumbent internet service providers, or the communities themselves, to build out the last mile and connect homes and businesses within the municipality. While incorporating a commercial model allowed for competition of different carriers — a marketplace solution which was thought by many to be a benefit — in practice, neither private nor public internet service providers built out the infrastructure, leaving the SuperNet’s stated policy goal of increasing connection for Albertans to fall short (Bakardjieva & Williams 2010, Mitchell, 2007).

To guard against access to the internet as the latest project in infrastructural colonialism, it is essential that communities are not only consulted about what kind of infrastructure they want, and how they want it but that they have the opportunity to build it for themselves. The failure of

SuperNet planners to tap into the lived experiences of Albertans, and what can be considered as the subsequent failure of the SuperNet to connect all Albertans has been touted as a reason for the low level of usage from communities (Bakardjieva & Williams 2010).

Understanding the effect of the Alberta SuperNet and its impact on universal connectivity in the province is worthwhile. Investigating the ‘success’ of one of the largest government- funded interventions into internet access in Canada’s history is especially relevant as the federal government grapples with how to close digital divides nationally. How success is measured is not universally agreed upon in Canada in academic, government or civil society contexts.

Importantly, what measures are used speaks to assumptions of the measurer, and the politics of perspective: this type of knowledge production is central to “the way in which power operates”

(Hall, 1992, p. 225). Nearly two decades after it was conceptualized (Kozak, 2014; Mitchel,

2010), there are still lessons to be learned about how communities have engaged with the

SuperNet. The province has taken other measures, including in January 2012 when Alberta announced their Final Mile Rural Connectivity Initiative, designed to ensure “high-speed Internet

is available to at least 98 per cent of Albertans” (Government of Alberta, 2012). At the time, the province estimated 43,600 rural households did not have access to high-speed Internet and the program was aimed to close the gaps that had not been closed by the SuperNet program. There are municipalities, such as Olds, AB that have benefitted from the connection to the SuperNet by building out their own infrastructure. The creators behind the Olds’ network, O-Net, have been successful in flipping the script and placing the emphasis in policy discussions from connecting the ‘last mile’ — the ISP to the home — to making it the ‘first mile,’ which foregrounds community involvement and community-driven development (McMahon et al., 2011). While

Olds has paved the way, for the SuperNet infrastructure to contribute to lower prices and universal service other municipalities must be able to follow in the tradition of O-Net by connecting to the network, or, like the town of Viking, AB, leverage the backbone in new and innovative ways.

Albertan Community Networks: The Success of Olds

The ‘Gigabit Town’ (Olds Institute, 2020) of Olds, AB has run a community broadband network since 2015. It is a prominent example for Canadian towns looking to improve their own service (Cybera, 2016; McNally et. al, 2016). Olds’ O-Net has become the most heralded community ISP to make use of the SuperNet. O-Net was conceptualized as the SuperNet neared completion in 2004 (Liem, 2014). At the time, the town’s internet infrastructure was emblematic of rural Canada: information was transmitted over ageing telephone infrastructure on copper wire. A non-profit, the Olds Institute for Community and Regional Development, approached two of the province’s largest ISPs to entice them to provide upgraded speeds (Liem, 2014).

When the ISPs declined to upgrade their network, Olds built their own. The community constructed a fibre optics network, connecting residents and businesses to the SuperNet. When

O-Net launched in 2013, it offered gigabit speeds to residents — the highest residential speeds in the country (Chung, 2013). Are these speeds being utilized, or do Olds residents “not care so much about the super qualities of the SuperNet,” as two researchers concluded about “rural folks’” thoughts on the provincial backbone in 2010? (Bakardjieva & Williams, p. 170).

Alberta’s History with Public Telecom: Alberta Government Telephones

Canadians have a long history of owning and operating their own telecommunications infrastructure. The expansion of a national telephone network can be traced back to an 1880

Charter that gave the Bell Telephone Company of Canada exclusive rights and worked in tandem with the Canadian Pacific westward railway expansion (Winseck, 1995a). The charter functioned to usurp connection rights from provinces and the municipalities “stripping them of any power to control the company’s operations” (Winseck, 1995a, pg. 3). The debate over jurisdiction is one that has been mirrored into the present day. By the beginning of the 20th century, criticisms of

Bell were ringing throughout the prairie provinces. Dissatisfaction with the telephone company included concerns about high rates for both urban and long-distance calling, anti-competitive behaviour, including refusal to interconnect with independent carriers and exclusive contracts at railway terminals, which often acted as a community’s commercial hub. In 1905, the Manitoba government declared that the telephone system was a natural monopoly and “one of the most…necessary facilities for the dispatch of business and for the convenience and pleasure of the people. ...The price should be so low that labouring men and artisans can have the convenience and advantage of the telephone, as well as the merchant, the professional man and the gentleman of wealth and leisure” (Winseck, 1995, p. 8, citing J. Mavor, 1917). Albertans echoed Manitoba’s sentiments, and as telephone usage surged across the prairies, urban trade and labour unions led the call for municipal ownership. By 1907, the Alberta Government Telephone

System (AGT) was created. The provincial carrier started as an amalgamation of competitive local exchange carriers, before being merged with the newly purchased Bell system (Winseck,

1995, p. 8). Alberta Government Telephones provided service throughout the province for the next eight decades, during much of which its prices were regulated by the Public Utilities Board of Alberta. The provincial Crown Corporation was privatized in October 1990, leading to the creation of Telus (Webber, 1992). The company later merged with the already-private BCTel in

1997. The privatization was part of a larger trend in Canada and the United States that defined much of the 1990s and the period since (Crandall & Hazlett, 2000), with the introduction of the

Telecommunications Act of 1993 in Canada and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in the

U.S, both of which sought to liberalize the market.

Case Study: Viking

Introduction

The internet service available to citizens in Viking, Alberta a town of just over 1,000

(Statistics Canada, 2016) two hours east of Edmonton, is typical of many rural Albertan communities. They had access to internet service but were not happy with the speeds they were getting and dealt with latency issues during high-traffic times of day. In early 2019, the town launched as an internet service provider, the Town of Viking Internet Service, offering connectivity to residents. As their marketing literature boasts, “If you can see the Providence

Grain elevator you can get internet service from us” (Town of Viking, 2020). Not content with the service and cost to residents of incumbent providers MCSNet and Telus, the town administration was concerned with getting faster, more reliable internet speeds at better costs.

The town leveraged the existing connection to the Alberta SuperNet which came in through their main town complex, which hosts the town hall, skating rink, and library (McLeod, 2020). They increased the amount of connectivity leased from the SuperNet, and working with their IT provider, NuTec Electric from Camrose, AB, they purchased wireless equipment and installed it on the town’s grain elevator (McLeod, 2020). The municipal building had been subscribing to service from MCSNet out of nearby St. Paul. The impetus to build their own network borne after reaching out to incumbents about increasing existing capacity. In 2019, town administrators got word that Telus, was increasing service to a nearby business. Their interest piqued, they reached out to Telus for an estimate on how much it would cost to have fibre expanded to service their

municipal building. The town’s chief administrative officer Don McLeod reports Telus quoted the cost of the installation at $80,000 (McLeod, 2020). Turned off by the cost, and knowing that the town’s complex had a connection to the Alberta SuperNet, McLeod began to investigate how to leverage that link into service not just for the building, but for the surrounding community.

McLeod worked with their existing information technology provider, Camrose, AB based-NuTec

Electric, to research options for how to extend the SuperNet service. Using the town budget, they purchased equipment and increased the amount of bandwidth they were getting from the

SuperNet. In an interview conducted for this research project, McLeod reported, “I never knew what a terabyte was until I started talking to these IT guys. Of course, I heard on Star Trek!”

(McLeod, 2020). Monthly the town spends $800 on 35 terabytes (upload and download) that they lease from Bell, the company that runs the SuperNet.

Town of Viking Internet Service

In an interview conducted for this research project in October 2020, McLeod reports that the service now connects 35 residents, with more users trickling in as their contracts expire with their existing providers. McLeod says the town service differs from the incumbents, as it does not offer to buy out contracts. As of November 2020, they were bringing in $2,500 a month, with

$1,000 going to NuTec Electric, which manages the service, as per their cost-sharing agreement, leaving the town with $1,500 a month (McLeod, 2020). The goal, says McLeod, is to get to 100 customers, putting their revenue at $2,500 a month, which he counts as “found money” (McLeod in interview, 2020). To get the service going the town spent $6,000: approximately 60% of that buying the needed equipment and 40% on the labour to install it (McLeod, 2020), a savings of

$72,000 from what Telus had offered to set up the service. Monthly the municipality spends

$800 on 35 terabytes of bandwidth from Bell/Axia. Viking was also able to keep operational

costs down by adding the internet service as another line item on their existing billing structure.

The service is billed and collected as part of the town’s utility bills every two months.

The Town of Viking Internet Service utilizes a fixed wireless model. Instead of running fibre optic cable underground or on light poles towards homes, the wired SuperNet connection in the town hall is broadcast wirelessly using receivers and transmitters from Ubiquiti equipment, a popular wireless ISP equipment provider that offers “end-to-end internet distribution technology” (Ubiquiti, 2020). They broadcast using publicly available 5 GHz spectrum, one of the standard Wi-Fi set aside radio frequencies commonly used by home internet routers. Because the free to use radio frequency works for their system, Viking did not have to participate in costly auctions to access set aside spectrum helping to keep their costs down. While Viking used

Wi-Fi spectrum, the federal Canada has used spectrum policy to address the geographical digital divide in the past with the rural remote broadband systems (RRBS) program (Taylor, 2018).

Despite the initial seeming success, the program fizzled out due to “speculative licence holders, poor economies of scale and, most importantly, faint government support” (Taylor, 2018, p.

754). RRBS was especially popular in Alberta; of the 555 licenses Industry Canada issued in

2011, 450 of them were in the province. But by 2015, only 52 RRBS stations remained nationwide (p. 754). The prairie provinces were in a good position to utilize the unused television spectrum, at 600 MHz signals it can travel longer distances than Wi-Fi signals, so less towers are needed, and is strong enough to travel through trees (p. 752). In the absence of the program, Viking is making use of the public resource anyways, but would benefit from higher quality, but still accessible and affordable, spectrum.

To purchase internet from the municipality, each customer has a receiver installed on their building that has a direct line of sight to the grain elevator and picks up the signal. A wire

then goes from the receiver into the home or office’s modem or router. The equipment installation costs $99 to the end user, and they sign a contract for 36 months, with an option of three levels of data usage, each promising a symmetrical upload/download speed of 50 Mbps.

The basic package offers 250 GB for $59.99; the mid-level is 500 GB for $89.99 or unlimited data for $129.99 (Town of Viking, 2020). By contrast, MCSNet offers residential packages that range between 59.95 for 125GB per month and unlimited data plans at $149.95 and $199.95 a month, that state “typical users will experience speeds up to 30 mbps down/5 mbps up”

(MCSNet, 2020). Telus’ top plan offers 300GB for $73 a month, with download speeds of

25Mbps and upload speeds of 5Mbps (FindInternet.ca, 2020).

The impetuous for launching the service was the low speeds being offered by existing service providers. McLeod says many residents normalized the speed of service for many years.

He reports high traffic periods as being especially problematic: “If you tried to work after 3:30 in afternoon internet was so slow you couldn't load programs” (McLeod, 2020). With the onset of

COVID-19 and the increase in people working and schooling from home, he said “everybody was just disgusted with the speed of the internet” from the incumbent providers. McLeod reports of the 35 locations connected, they have only had concerns with one, because of the material of the building (McLeod, 2020). A speed test done in November 2020 showed speeds of 45 Mbps download and 44 upload (see appendix, figure 2), not quite surpassing the threshold of 50/10 by the Canadian government, but near to the download speed, and more than seven times the upload speed.

In addition to speaking with McLeod, I also interviewed community member and sometimes town contractor Amanda Nordstrom, who was recommended by McLeod. Like many people who make up the community of Viking, Nordstrom and her family of four are not official

residents of the rural community as she lives outside of the town’s borders. However, living about six and a half kilometres from the grain elevator, and main transmitter for the town’s internet service, she can receive subscribe to the community ISP. Nordstrom switched service providers in the summer of 2019. After more than a year of what she describes as “really, good consistent service,” the signal from the tower started to become unreliable this October

(Nordstrom, 2020) – as a result, she put off doing our interview because the service was being repaired.

In results from internet speed tests Nordstrum did in the previous two weeks before our interview she reported download speeds of 36, 39, and 36 Mbps, and upload speeds of 16, 23

Mbps (Ooka Speed Test, 2020). While the family of four does still see some buffering, especially noticed by their two kids, Nordstrom says “it’s not too bad” (Nordstrom, 2020). All four family members can each be on their own device using the internet, which she reports as a substantial improvement over their previous service. Nordstrom says she is satisfied with the Town of

Viking Internet, as well as the higher speeds she says the service she gets is much improved from her former provider. Nordstrom had previously subscribed to MCSNet. She says the service was up to $10 cheaper per month, but she was not happy with the speeds. She reports routinely getting download speeds of 15-18 Mbps, with a maximum of 20 Mbps. Upload speeds, she says, were capped at 2 Mbps: “trying to upload anything or send files was painful” (Nordstrom, 2020), echoing McLeod’s reports of slow service. While Telus has wireline internet options within the

Town of Viking, they do not extend to Nordstrom’s farm. The family did try one of Telus’ smart hubs but say it did not work for them. She reports that while she was with MCSNet, she had to replace her router “many times” on her own, because they “wouldn’t deal with it.” In comparison, in her recent issues with the Town of Viking service, she had a technician from

NuTec Electric come out to her property twice. The first time was to upgrade her router, which she says improved the service, but the company also returned to do a firmware update on the newer router anyways, and asked her to monitor the service and send them speed test results if she encountered inconsistence service. She said she appreciates having NuTec come to her home, even during a pandemic, to replace equipment: “There is enough technology things to deal with in your own household let alone the internet if you’re having an issue with it” (Nordstrom,

2020). While it has not been without problems, she says she would not go back to her old provider, MCSNet.

Expansion of the Network

More rural residents like Nordstrom and her family will have their choice in providers increased as Viking’s service grows. With the transmitter on the grain elevator, they can provide service at a range of up to a 15-kilometre radius around the town. In addition, the ISP has already expanded once, with a second broadcast site where they have installed equipment on a tower belonging to Enercapita Energy Ltd., a natural gas company located west of the municipality

(McLeod, 2020). By utilizing existing infrastructure, the ISP also saves money on capitol costs.

Says McLeod: “We are using existing towers. We don't even have to put them up, they're already there” (McLeod, 2020). The towns expansion plans include six additional strategically located towers nearby (see appendix, figure 3). The town is in talks with the tower owners and are planning for another service expansion by the spring of 2021 (McLeod, 2020). One of the additional ‘towers’ the service is planning on is a hog barn on a Hutterite farm south of Viking.

The barn has a tall “big leg” attached to it, where grain is stored and mixed for feeding the pigs

(McLeod, 2020). McLeod says the set up is simple, both for the ISP and the person or company providing the tower. The service installs the small broadcasting unit, runs a wire down into the

building into a standard 120-volt outlet, and then offers free Wi-Fi for the site. Each broadcasting unit can expand the service by about 10 kilometres, depending on the topography, which is quite flat around the area.

With McLeod’s casual attitude towards setting up the service, they were operating before realizing they needed to a CRTC license. McLeod got a call from the province asking about the service, and friendly informing them that they would need to apply. McLeod said the process was simple, taking just “a few pieces of paper and three days” (McLeod, 2020). They are now registered with the CRTC as providing “Basic International Telecommunications Services” and as “Resellers of High Speed Retail Internet Service” (CRTC, 2020c).

Service in the Community

The Town of Viking is most striking because of the relative ease they had setting up the network, the low cost to the town, and therefore the replicability of the project in other small

Albertan towns. While many scholars, regulators and policy advocates point to wireline fibre optic broadband infrastructure as the best option for bridging digital divides, due to speed, reliability, and futureproofing (McNally et al., 2016), the capital costs to set up fibre infrastructure can be prohibitive, especially for smaller communities, which are constrained by the province’s Municipal Government Act to maintain balanced budgets (Alberta Municipal

Affairs, 2020). By using a fixed wireless system and existing infrastructure, like grain elevators, as well as already having a billing system in place, Viking was able to keep capitol costs low, and get a system up and running over a span of months. McLeod says he has been approached by towns in similar situations about utilizing the same method. In Viking, McLeod says, wireless

“for us as a small community was the only viable option to get our residents high speed internet.

I can't speak for other towns, but for us this was an option and council saw it as an opportunity to

provide one more service to the residents of town at a reasonable cost” (McLeod, 2020). For her part, Nordstrom said that while the provincial and the federal governments have been saying they want to get rural residents access to high-quality internet, “I kind of doubt that money will ever get here” (Nordstrom, 2020). In the last nine months since the pandemic began access to high- speed reliable internet has been more important than ever, as jobs and schooling is increasingly done from home. Nordstrom was proud that the town “got creative” and moved forward with the internet service rather than rely on other levels of government to step in, “they took the bull by the horns without waiting for anyone to do for them. They are increasing the viability of a small community” (Nordstrom, 2020). As well as the advantage community members receive in terms of internet speeds and service, she also sees subscribing to the service as a large advantage for the town overall primarily because it adds another source of revenue for the small municipality and keeps money within the local area which can work to stimulate the economy. She sees the opportunity for the service to result in savings for the taxpayer, rather than “relying solely on property taxes to operate and offer services.” She says, “it was a smart move for the town to be able to offer the service, you’re supporting your own municipality and the viability of your own community by switching over.” Nordstrom says she knows a few people who have switched over to the service so far, including her in laws, who did it both for the higher speeds available and because they thought it was important to support the town. As more people understand the value proposition for the town, and “read the fine print,” she sees the service growing its userbase.

Nordstrom said she can not speak for others, but she would rather “support local, instead of a huge company.”

Because of the ubiquitous of internet in daily life in 2020, McLeod sees a role for the state in ensuring universal access. “It's a utility, where offering you a utility, just like we offer

you water, sewer service, garbage pick up, all that stuff. You pay for that because you need it.

Well, who doesn't need internet now?” (McLeod, 2020). The speeds citizens were being offered previous to the launch of the service were not acceptable, leaving Viking residents behind, says

McLeod. The town’s chief administrative officer sees municipalities as being a natural fit for providing service. Whereas federal and even provincial bodies can be out of touch, and our of reach, for local concerns if Viking residents experience a service issue, “they can just walk up to my desk” (McLeod, 2020). For the town, being able to offer connectivity made sense. In addition to facilitating higher-speed connectivity for their residents, says McLeod, “I saw it as a money- making opportunity for the town” (McLeod, 2020).

Conclusion

While the type of network that Viking is utilizing will not work for every town, and may not always work for Viking, the cost of implementing it versus the benefits of delivering faster internet to residents seems like a win-win. When speaking with McLeod he mentioned that he was in talks with another town nearby who wanted to implement their own community network.

The municipality, however, was convinced that fibre was the way to go. When it comes to fibre versus wireless infrastructure there is no question: Having a full fibre network is more likely to meet the CRTC’s speed targets, it is more future proof, and it is more reliable. However, it is much more expensive. While federal and provincial policymakers should aim for implementing fibre networks for all Canadians, the reality is that it is not happening, even with the launch of the latest version of the Universal Broadband Fund (UBF). In the meantime, if small rural communities with limited budgets are able to create networks that increase the quality of the internet for their residents it should be encouraged, both with policy and federal funding to implement it. What policy makers should be wary of is creating a ‘poor internet for poor people’

– all people, regardless of income or where they live should have access to high-quality, affordable internet. The internet as a utility needs to include the standards set out by the CRTC in

2016, which include stipulations around speed and quality of the network. Until that happens, community networks like the Town of Viking Internet Service is a laudable example of what communities are able to do with relatively little ease. It is a helpful proof of concept for other similar communities who may want to create their own networks.

Case Study: Calgary Internet Exchange

Introduction

The second alternative network I chose for this research project is Calgary’s Internet

Exchange Point, YYCIX, one of Canada’s largest internet exchanges. Like the City of Calgary,

YYCIX is not an internet service provider, but serves as an example of a case study of an alternative network created and managed by volunteers within Calgary’s community of network operators. It is also not a traditional network, rather its main function is to facilitate interconnection between networks. Public internet exchanges provide both a physical space and a governance model, or framework of agreement, for networks to interconnect with other members and exchange traffic. As the internet is a network of networks, exchanges strengthen the ecosystem by providing more opportunities for networks to reach each other, at lower costs, while adding redundancy which increases efficiencies within a local area. Without public exchanges in place, network operators must rely on being able to connect at costly, and sometimes unavailable to them, hubs owned by commercial telecommunications companies, or pay more in transit fees to travel to exchange points that are further away, often that cross national borders, which has effectiveness and privacy implications, as well as an increase in costs.

What is an Internet Exchange? An IXP plays the role for internet traffic that an airport hub plays for airlines exchanging passengers (ISOC, 2020). Small and mid-size airlines collect local passengers and drop them off

at a regional hub where larger airlines will then collect passengers for longer journeys. By relying on smaller airlines to deposit passengers at the hubs and rely on the infrastructure available to larger airlines, duplication of larger trips are avoided and efficiencies are created.

Alternatively, you can think of it like a crossroads, “with each road snaking out through the basement and signposted with a list of the many possible destinations along its course” (Zajko,

2018, p. 16). According to Open-IX, an organization created to manage inconsistencies and coordinate standards between exchanges, an IXP is “a physical network infrastructure operated by a single entity with the purpose to facilitate the exchange of internet traffic between autonomous systems (AS)” (Open-IX, 2020). The term ‘autonomous system’ is used to convey the nuance that is lost with ‘network’:

Once interconnected, separate networks are arguably part of the same network: the entire internet is often considered a network, a network of networks. To resolve this terminological problem we employ the term ‘autonomous system,’ which is the standard technical definition of a technically stand-alone network. (EURO-IX, 2020) IXPs connect more than two AS, and it must have an open membership policy (EURO-IX, 2020;

Open-IX, 2020), meaning there are clear rules and anyone who follows them may join. The cooperative peering efforts are physical locations where “each network ‘announces’ what destinations can be reached by going through it” (Zajko 2018, p. 16). Exchanges are varied in their complexity with some, like DE-CIX, an internet exchange operator that began in Frankfurt,

Germany in 1995 which manages “more than 10 Terabits per second peak traffic” (DE-CIX,

2020), while it could be as “simple as a single switch in a basement” (Chatzis et al., 2013, p. 21).

The building block of IXPs, a switch is hardware that allows for ultra-fast wired interconnection.

Other features of IXPs are that they are ‘settlement-free’ – networks do not pay each other to connect, the IXP itself does not mandate the relationship between networks, and traditionally the

amount of volume exchanged is not limited (Chatzis et al., p. 22) – there is no change to cost based on volume of data.

According to IXP Manager, an organization founded to connect the managers of exchange points, and which offers an operation platform used by 147 IXPs, there are currently

“about 450 active IXPs” worldwide (IXP Manager, 2020). The history of public exchanges dates to the mid-1990s and the decommissioning of the National Science Foundation Network

(NSFNet) (Chatzis et al., 2013), an internet backbone created in the 1980s to connect university supercomputers together to facilitate research (Ceruzzi, 2013; ARIN, 2020a). While ARPANet and similar networks including HEPNet and CSNET were built to facilitate specific, closed research communities, NSFNet was created to “support the general academic and research community” (Leiner et al., 1997, p. 10). In 1994 a plan was developed to transfer the NSFNet backbone for wider use by creating four public network access points (NAPs) to act as public hubs where private ISPs could interconnect (Chatzis et al.): a large-scale network of networks.

The move was “partly responsible for a smooth transition from a largely monolithic network that started as a government-funded academic experiment to what marked the beginnings of the modern internet” (Chatzis et al., p. 20).

Benefits of IXPs

Commercial ISPs interconnection infrastructure, e.g., a ‘colocation facility,’ ‘central office’ or ‘carrier hotel,’ use proprietary, rather than neutral or open, protocols, and membership is limited, and often expensive. Public internet exchanges are community efforts to increase interconnection, providing data packets with more pathways to travel from one point to another.

The more places that more networks have to connect, the greater the advantages will be for all users of networks. As early as 2012, Woodcock and Edleman, listed these benefits in a

report about efficiency in Canadian internet traffic: “cost savings for networks and internet users, increased bandwidth, reducing network latency and overall improved performance, retaining the benefits of Canadian privacy and other laws, and improving reliability.” Private or proprietary connection points including central offices and carrier hotels offer improvements in connectivity by creating more pathways for all traffic – even if you are not connected directly, it opens routes that data may be travelling. Public internet exchanges serve the same purpose, as well as to provide an open space for all networks to connect to each other regardless of the type of network, and often for low or no cost. By adding more routes, especially open, non-proprietary pathways, congestion is decreased in an area, leading to quicker connections and less instances of dropped packets (or incomplete requests), as well as faster speeds for end users waiting for, say, a page to load.

Another benefit of cross connection, especially, at IXPs is the lower cost to both networks and end users, as those savings can be passed on. The cost to connect to public internet exchanges is lower than the costs for traditional transit. As exchanges become more widely used, they allow “each network to exchange data with all others – sharply reducing those networks’ reliance on costly transit service or long-distance links to a remote IXP” (Woodcock & Edleman,

2012, p. 3). Because an IXP is more successful, and more valuable for each network that connects to it, the more connections that it has, one strategy used by exchanges has been to lower the costs of connecting to the network often by foregoing charging connection fees. By keeping connection costs low it increases incentives for networks to become members. IXPs may chose to provide, and often do, the “core network infrastructure, but each participating network must provide its own link to/from the IXP and its own equipment to be installed at the IXP. In this way, an IXP can avoid imposing charges on members” (Woodcock & Edleman, 2012, p. 8). This

allows the network to grow more quickly. Networks may choose to upgrade equipment or add additional connections, but the choice is theirs. This framework allows networks independence, as well as keeping costs down for the IXP. In addition, it “simplifies IXP governance by reducing the scope of issues requiring coordination and agreement” (Woodcock & Edleman,

2012, p. 8). As the boards of public exchanges are often volunteers, a straightforward governance model is more attractive for securing quality board members, as well as the wider membership.

Internet exchanges also increase the likelihood that internet traffic stays local. Keeping traffic local not only increases speeds, but also increases the chances that traffic does not follow traditional communications pathways: railway corridors south of the border. Interconnecting locally can have a positive impact on privacy, allowing more data to stay within Canada’s jurisdiction, rather than flowing down to nearby exchanges, such as Seattle, Wash, crossing international borders and opening internet user’s information to security risks. Once data crosses into the United States, it becomes subject to American laws, which has widespread implications for Canadians’ data sovereignty (Clement & Obar, 2015).

Another major advantage of IXPs is their commitment to open-source standards and technologies. Because public internet exchanges operate openly, they conform to network neutrality standards, long an ideal of public internet advocates and scholars. The principle of network neutrality is that “information networks are often more valuable when they are less specialized” (Barratt & Shade, 2007, p. 298, citing Wu, n.d.). Network neutrality advocates and scholars have long posited that so-called ‘stupid’ models allow for innovations on the edge: “By its design, the internet has enabled an extraordinary creativity precisely because it has pushed creativity to the ends of the network” (Lemley & Lessig, 2000, p. 9). By remaining committed to allowing all networks to join, in contrast to a private central office connection hub which asserts

more control in terms of rules and is closed to many networks, IXPs create an environment which offers the benefits of connection without limiting what networks decide to do with that connection.

Challenges to IXPs

Despite the added benefit of increased speed and the public good in terms of privacy, public exchanges face significant challenges. Which networks exchange traffic with each other has long been subject to economic imperatives and is fraught with legacy agreements. Incumbent internet service providers may choose to increase barriers for smaller networks by making it harder for these smaller ISPs to interconnect to the incumbent’s network by requiring costly proprietary software or hardware, charging fees, and creating other disincentives. The result of this is a decrease in a competitive marketplace for independent and smaller service providers and an ecosystem for internet users that is less reliable and more costly. While connection to large

ISPs and their customer bases can happen at private locations, or hubs, internet exchanges offer a convenient place for networks to exchange traffic. However, large ISPs often can and do chose not to become members of exchanges, despite the benefits it would bring to the wider internet:

One of the most visible illustrations of this is the fact that while many smaller Canadian ISPs offer the chance to peer openly at public internet exchange points, such as the Toronto Internet Exchange (TorIX) housed in 151 Front Street, none of the major ISPs (e. g., Bell, Rogers, Telus) do so. (Clement & Obar, 2015, p. 22)

Dominant, or incumbent networks, often have their own connection infrastructure already which may lead them to the decision to protect their interests as opposed to creating the opportunity for other, smaller networks to enjoy similar benefits. Another challenge occurs when incumbent players do participate. Because of their outsized influence, there is a danger in allowing them to

dominate the process of choosing an IXPs location based on their own interests, as opposed to the most optimal spot for the community (Woodcock and Edleman, 2012, p. 10).

Calgary’s IXP

In early 2012 Canada had two IXPs (Toronto and Ottawa), one for every 17 million people (Woodcock and Edleman, 2012). By comparison, the United States had one for every 4 million people, and Australia, an apt comparison given their size and population density, had 11

IXPs, one for every 2 million people (Woodcock and Edleman, 2012). At the time, three more

IXPs were in the planning stages in Winnipeg, Montreal, and Calgary. As of 2020, Canada now has 12 IXPs (CIRA 2020), or one for every 3.8 million people. Alberta’s two internet exchanges are in Calgary (YYCIX) and Edmonton (YEGIX). Alberta’s independent internet service providers who may have a local network need to be able to access the wider internet. Providers that are geographically close to either exchange may choose to build a fibre line to connect to it directly. In the absence of that, smaller networks need to make interconnection agreements with larger providers or transit networks or lease fiber from the SuperNet or an incumbent telecommunications provider to route their traffic to an exchange (McNally et al., 2016, p. 16).

The Calgary Internet Exchange, a non-profit founded in late 2012, provides a free or low- cost option for community organizations and businesses to increase transfer speeds by increasing the quality and quantity of connections (YYCIX Internet Exchange Community Ltd., 2020a).

According to the YYCIX website, the “simple, noble goal is to create a meeting place where

Western Canadian networks can directly exchange some of their traffic efficiently on an ethernet switch without additional costs” (YYCIX, 2020c). YYCIX does not sell any services, and the exchange is explicit that it is not an internet service provider, but for networks that do wish to obtain internet service, there are ISPs that connect to the exchange. Instead of acting as

competition for ISPs, the exchange is meant to “complement their services to improve local internet performance” (YYCIX, 2020c). Since its inception, the goal of YYCIX has been to “get as many locals to connect and have them swap as much traffic as they want locally,” said

YYCIX’s Theo de Raadt, who I interviewed for this project (2020). de Raadt helped launch the network and acts as its administrator.

Part of the early success of the network, says de Raadt is that he is well connected within the community. de Raadt is founder of OpenBSD, a free and open-source operating system that is used worldwide. Started in 1996 by de Raadt, OpenBSD just celebrated 25 years (OpenBSD,

2020). Use of the software is advocated for by librarians who point to its free cost and compatibility with perhaps out of date computers used by public libraries (Houser, 2009), as well as by researchers who herald its efficiencies and maintainability (Yu et al., 2005). As a testament both to OpenBSD’s notoriety internationally, and its impact locally, a week-long collaborative meetup of programmers hosted in Calgary by the volunteer-run organization, was “the first time, the term ‘hackathon’ was used to describe such a meeting” (Richterich, 2019). The Canadian not-for-profit is well known in the open-source world, with the project earning de Raadt the 2004

Award for the Advancement of Free Software (Lee, 2005). (Lawrence Lessig, also discussed in the paper, claimed the honour in 2002.) Because people knew OpenBSD they were willing to help with the launch of YYCIX, says de Raadt (2020). The exchange’s first switch was a hand me down from a board member at TorIX (de Raadt, 2020). While it would have gone for about

“$400 on eBay at the time,” (de Raadt, 2020) with the switch and some space at local data centre, DataHive (DataHive, 2013), the exchange was up and running. As YYCIX grew, they added to and upgraded their equipment, the switches the exchange uses now are about $12,000

(de Raadt).

The challenge for an IXP starting is getting networks to see the value in connecting to it, the fewer networks there are, the less incentive there is for members to join. To add value, de

Raadt said the plan was to do two things, have domain name servers (DNS) at the exchange, and second, to get content delivery network (CDNs) data caches (de Raadt, 2020). Domain name servers act like phonebooks for the internet. When a user types in a website address into their browser it is converted into a number, and a DNS tells the ISP the directions for how to get to the corresponding server to locate and return the requested content to the user. Getting DNS was

“easy,” said de Raadt, “they only go to internet exchanges” (2020). The second step, getting

CDNs is much harder, and something the IXP is and will continue to try for (de Raadt, 2020).

When an IXP gets big enough, content providers, for instance websites such as Facebook or

Netflix, will store frequently used data in local areas (de Raadt, 2020). The idea being that when an end user goes to a website, content that has been loaded by a lot of other users in the area, say a popular movie on a streaming site, or the banner or other elements of a social media site, that content can be stored locally, reducing the amount of data that must travel to the website’s main servers. The impact being that a page will load much faster; the shorter distance results in less latency. Having caches on hand greatly increase the value of an exchange becoming more valuable for connecting networks (de Raadt, 2020). When it comes to growing the exchange, it is not only the presence of local and backbone networks that is important, but also having data caches on site from content providers. The challenge, however, is that it is hard to incentivize networks to join without caches, and it is impossible to get CDNs to join without networks. Just as more CDNs will bring in more ISPs, the more ISPs you have, the more likely you are to get data caches. Says de Raadt: “the more ISPs you get, the more pressure you get, the more content you get, the more pressure it puts on companies to get CDNs” (2020). In early 2020, YYCIX had

four caches at its data centres, one each from Google, Akami, Facebook, and Cloudflare (Akami has since left, though YYCIX is hoping for their return next year (YYCIXd, 2020)). At the time, de Raadt said that “about 30% of most small ISPs traffic is from these four caches” (de Raadt,

2020). Incumbent networks on the other hand, have their own caches at their data centres, giving them an advantage over smaller providers.

There had been an attempt to get an IXP in Calgary started prior to YYCIX. Called

ABIX, Alberta Internet Exchange, it involved players from Cybera, Shaw, and Axia (de Raadt,

2020). According to de Raadt, conversations around governance dominated for a year and a half, and there was still no exchange to speak of: “I ended up on a board with a bunch of suits — who didn’t want it” (de Raadt, 2020). De Raadt and others had a location in mind with DataHive, made the agreement, installed a switch and got YYCIX up and running. For de Raadt, he advocates for doing the technical side first, and the governance will come. The difficulty in getting started may speak to the challenges laid out by Woodcock and Edelman of domineering by larger providers within community exchanges (2012).

YYCIX operates a non-profit and the people that run it are volunteers. The exchange started, and runs today, “with a little help from our friends,” said Raadt in a 2013 presentation

(de Raadt, 2013, p. 23). The exchange is made up of “a community of techies, network operators, and supporters” (de Raadt, 2013, p. 23). Community members, especially users, donate resources, from “hosting, fiber, switches, and optics, as well as funding” (YYCIX, 2020d). The exchange does not charge for networks to connect, though members may choose to make donations in lieu of regular port fees they may be charged elsewhere. When starting out, Calgary had to decide whether to charge peering fees. The advice from organizations like the Canadian

Internet Registry Authority (CIRA) advocated a model that used fees in order to be financially

self-sustaining and have access to funds, says de Raadt (2020). When setting out their governance model, YYCIX used Toronto’s exchange as a model: “the Charter is a copy of a

TorIX charter” (de Raadt, 2020), but unlike TorIX, Calgary does not charge fees. The relative nearness of Seattle’s IXP influenced their decision. The IXP is not only much, much larger than the fledgling YYCIX, but also does not charge fees, increasing the incentive for networks to chose it over a smaller IXP like Calgary. Vancouver’s exchange, VANIX, got its start after

Calgary’s, but does charge fees, which de Raadt sees a mistake for the growth of the B.C. ISP, as networks can choose to port at nearby Seattle instead (de Raadt, 2020).

YYCIX, like most exchanges, follows the connection protocols set by the Internet

Engineering Task Force (IETF), the international internet architecture body that develops and promotes open standards used for interconnection (IETF, 2020). To facilitate interconnection, anonymous systems follow these standards to ensure compatibility with exchanges and other networks. YYCIX also includes other guidelines for participation including that the exchange cannot be used for illegal purposes, it is not to be used by a network to exchange traffic within its own network, members cannot use others’ equipment without permission, as well as confidentiality stipulations such as that members cannot monitor the traffic flowing through the exchange (YYCIX, 2013). While the amount of data networks can exchange is generally not regulated (Chatzis et al., 2013), to guard against abuse YYCIX does stipulate that networks who

‘flood’ the exchange are at risk of being banned (YYCIX, 2013).

In 2020, as of the exchange’s annual general meeting in late November, the exchange brought in $9,200 in donations (YYCIX, 2020d). The YYCIX website lists ways people may chose to donate, including needed equipment like optic transceivers or switches (YYCIX,

2020c). The exchange does have expenses, including regular maintenance and equipment

upgrades. They disclose their annual service fees at every AGM. Networks that connect to the exchange can request annual invoices, which are optional. The exchange sets invoices at $1,200.

Their website does stipulate that “these invoices provide a means for members to support the success of YYCIX, so please request them and attempt to get them paid” (YYCIX, 2020c).

YYCIX has grown to encompass a presence in six data centres, with eight traffic pathways, seven of which are redundant (YYCIX, 2020b). By having redundant pathways for traffic, data has options about which way to travel which decreases congestion and increases internet speeds, as well as acts as a fail safe if a route is to fail. The City of Calgary hosts some of the exchange’s switches in their data centres, and any other entity leasing City fibre can cross- connect at no charge (City of Calgary, 2020d). Broadly, the City sees the non-profit as a success:

“The Calgary Internet Exchange is rapidly growing, in part, due to City fibre, making [the] internet faster for everyone” (City of Calgary, 2020c, p. 5). As Calgary grows out its wholesale market, allowing for an increase in service-based competition, a greater number of networks may choose to interconnect through YYCIX. The decision to do so will benefit the network by accessing lower cost transit and increased connection. Adjacent networks within the exchange will benefit as each new network allows for additional data pathways increasing speed and redundancy overall. Even incumbent networks and their end users benefit as more options are available for local internet traffic, decreasing congestion in the area and allowing more traffic to stay local.

COVID-19 Impact and the Future of the IXP

Within the first months of the pandemic, IXPs saw a large uptick in traffic. In Calgary,

YYCIX saw a 25% surge in overall traffic as of April 2020 (Berthier, 2020). Worldwide, internet networks faced “unprecedented demands” (OECD, 2020, p. 3) as more and more people began

turned to online service for schooling, work and socializing, replacing once face to face interactions with virtual ones. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development pointed to the critical nature of IXPs to the internet and the record increases from December

2019 to March 2020, with “increases of up to 60% in total bandwidth handled per country”

(OECD, 2020, p. 3). In the international report, the OECD discussed countries where “big communication operators may refuse to interconnect domestically with other networks” (OECD,

2020, p. 4) leading to higher costs and lower quality, especially for smaller networks. The report then points to Canada directly:

Two large operators within Canada, for instance, peer at five and three IXPs, respectively, all within the United States, forcing 64% of Canadian domestic traffic to flow across the border through the United States. This greatly increases the costs and network instability experienced by Canadian customers. (OECD, 2020, p. 4-5) The impact of networks not connecting with each other, such as is the case in Canada, leads to increases in costs and risks, and poorer “overall internet performance” (OECD, 2020, p. 5).

While there has been much growth in IXPs in Canada since Woodcock and Edleman’s 2012 report, the OECD report makes it clear that more needs to be done to increase efficiency in

Canada’s internet.

For the part of Calgary’s IXP, it is growing and has plans to expand again in the near future. They added one additional pathway between data centres so far in 2020 (see appendix, figure 4). There is currently one additional data centre that will be added to the exchange, bringing the total from six to seven. With the new data centre they plan to bring five new network links online, bringing the total from eight to thirteen (see appendix, figure 5). According to board members at the most recent AGM in November 2020, the network is thriving, with members having “endless discussions about building for future capacity requirements” (YYCIX,

2020d).

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Conclusion

While the City of Calgary Internet Exchange is not a traditional internet service provider,

I chose to include it in this research project because of the values embedded within its structure.

The commitment to openness ensures that any network that wants to be a member of its community can do so. YYCIX follows the lead of other successful IXPs that do not charge port fees. By making connection costs optional it allows for smaller independent networks to join whereas they otherwise might not be able to. Finally, the network is truly community-led.

Membership is not restricted and the creation and growth of the network is correlated to its membership. Public exchanges do offer an alternative to the ways of thinking about internet infrastructure that imagines networks that are outside of the incumbent infrastructures that dominate so much of Canada’s telecommunications landscape. Board members, like de Raadt champion the public good brought about by the network, as it grows its success is not only felt by its membership but by the larger local internet ecosystem as congestion is lessened. By offering a chance for smaller networks to connect to the wider web, it lessens the prohibitive costs a would-be independent ISP may face if they wished to build infrastructure within their community, but then had to approach an incumbent to connect to their network which may charge fees that are out of reach for a small network, or impose conditions that make the proposition too difficult.

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Case study: City of Calgary Network

Introduction The City of Calgary offers a compelling case study both because of the existing telecommunications infrastructure and the municipality’s regulatory advocacy at the national and provincial levels around the increasing overlap of telecommunications and municipal infrastructure. While some rural network builders speak to being motivated by a lack of affordable, high-quality service options (McLeod, 2020; Liem, 2014), there is less focus on the desire to control their own infrastructure and data (Valleau, 2019; Internet Society, 2020), or being inspired to decentralize the web (NYC Mesh, 2020). Case studies of urban networks, like the City of Calgary’s, shed light on affordability, control of infrastructure, and jurisdictional tension between federal policy and local realities.

Nationwide, Canadians within the bottom 20% of incomes spend nearly 10% of their earnings on communications services (CRTC, 2019a). While Calgary-specific communications spending data is not available, as of January 2020, the municipality had the third-highest unemployment rate among Canadian cities, a number that has improved from the second highest in 2018, and the highest in 2017 and 2016 (Statistics Canada, 2020), as the city struggles to recover from a provincial recession which began in 2014 (Lucas & Tombe, 2019). According to non-profit Vibrant Communities Calgary (VCC) more than 120,000 Calgarians are living in poverty (2019). Already marginalized groups are overrepresented in poverty demographics within the city, including those who self identify as immigrants, females, single-family households, senior citizens, those living with disabilities and aboriginals (Eremenko, 2018). A

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further challenge to affordability within the city is that, according to the CRTC, urban Albertans spend more money on communication services than their counterparts across the country (2019a, infographic 1.6).

While federal efforts to increase affordability of internet service have had little impact, the City of Calgary has been a leader in Canada by pushing the boundaries of the role urban municipalities can play in the realm of telecommunications infrastructure. Chief among this is the City’s decision to build their own fibre optic network. As a large organization that delivers services that range from managing Calgary’s water supply, controlling traffic lights and train schedules, and providing emergency response services including police and fire, all the way to managing parks and recreation, assessing and collecting property taxes, and providing animal services, the City has many, varied connectivity needs. While traditionally, a city may have some of their own telecommunications infrastructure, but will rely on leasing service from large scale internet service providers for day-to-day operations, as well as the provision of services, the City of Calgary owns and operates its own fibre infrastructure. In addition, Calgary has an extensive network of dark fibre-optic cable (City of Calgary, 2020c), which it leases out. Unlike a traditional ISP, the City leases wholesale access to third parties, as long as they have the equipment and expertise in order to access the network without the help of the City. Throughout this section I discuss the history of the City’s network, including how it was imagined and implemented, how it is managed today, policy implemented by the City itself, and Calgary’s intergovernmental engagement in communication infrastructures.

Beginnings of the Network

The City’s first fibre build was done by their Water Services business in the late 1990s.

Rather than envisioning an overarching network, or inspired by visions of serving the public, the

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build was in response to the units own needs, installing a bit of fibre in order to streamline their own operations. This type of approach to using bits of fibre for specific purposes is common among Canadian cities (City of Toronto, 2020; City of Edmonton, 2019; City of Vancouver and

City of Surrey, 2019; City of Ottawa, 2017; City of Winnipeg, 2017; City of Montreal, 2015).

The City’s experience with municipally-owned and -operated infrastructure is also tied in to another utility: electricity. Alberta’s energy market “is unusual within Canada, having a competitive electricity market dominated by a mix of investor-owned and municipally-owned utilities,” including Enmax (Hale and Bartlett, 2019, p. 264). While the nuances of Alberta’s history of energy regulation is beyond the scope of this paper, it is enough to note that the during a wave of deregulation in the province in the mid-1990s, Alberta’s electric utilities industry underwent a major restructuring in an attempt to aggressively cut costs and streamline administration (Low, 2009), which resulted in the creation of Enmax, which has implications for the city’s fiber infrastructure. In 1995, the “Electric Utilities Act created an open-access, competitive power pool to trade electricity as a commodity [allowing Albertans] … to have a choice of who they purchased their electricity from” (Enmax, 2020). Calgary City Council soon after approved the creation of Enmax, a wholly owned subsidiary of the municipality (City of

Calgary, 2015a; Enmax, 2020). When Enmax was formed in January 1998 the City’s fiber optic assets were transferred to the new company for $750,000 (City of Calgary, 2015a). As part of the deal, the Fibre Optics Agreement with Respect to Ownership and Rights of Use, the City was guaranteed access at no cost until 2003, after which Enmax would lease the fibre back to the City at a “fair market rate” (City of Calgary, 2015a, p. 7). Enmax’s communications division, which operated that fibre, was called Envision. The provider did not offer residential service, instead it

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sold connectivity directly to businesses, offering high-speed intranets, virtual private networks, and interact services.

In 2002, a steering committee was formed that laid the groundwork for Calgary’s current fibre network (Basto, 2020). The Fibre Cable Duct and Wireless (FCDW) steering committee was created to “to provide stewardship for The City’s immediate and long-term fibre infrastructure needs in a co-ordinated way” (City of Calgary, 2015a, p 7). The committee was a partial response to the feeling that the City was paying too much for fiber, and the idea of imagining a municipal network took hold (Basto, 2020). In a 2015 document that outlines the current strategy for Calgary’s fibre infrastructure, the committee was described as a “bold move in the presence of Enmax Envision” (p. 8) which was also continuing to build fibre across the city. However, “the strategy was soon validated as demands for fibre increased shortly after and the cost avoidance was considerable” (2015a, p. 8). The committee included the directors from

“Transit, Roads, Transportation Infrastructure, Water Services, and Information Technology”

(City of Calgary, 2015a, p. 7), as well as David Basto who was “there to take notes” (Basto,

2020) and would quickly become the City’s Lead Fibre Optic Planner, a role he continues to hold. I interviewed Basto for this research project in October 2020. Basto credits then-Transit director John Hubbell with having vision, likening the creation of a telecommunications network to existing networks: "fibre optics are like transportation infrastructure, but for information"

(2020). To fund the project initially, the committee had the $750,000 from the sale of City fiber to Enmax, which would be used “to start the City’s own fibre optic plant” (City of Calgary,

2015a, p. 8). In a January 2003 meeting notes document from the committee (their fourth meeting, the earliest I was able to find with the help of Basto) the committee discusses “planning for replacement of all fibre leased from Enmax (2003, para 14.1), were creating a map for

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“future fibre optic needs of the city business units” (2003) and discussing a name and logo for the “community network” (2003, para 14.5, 14.6) (CCN, or Calgary Communication Network, was identified as being on the short list, a close approximation of much of the City’s network today: Calgary City Net). Once the decision was made to investigate what concrete steps should be taken, Basto was empowered by the FCDW committee get to work (Basto, 2020). A fiber team was built up, with about 10 people, now led by Ryan Angelo. In 2005 the team started the work of planning out the reimaging the network. After five years, in 2010, work on building the network began. Initially, the hardest part was not having City directors agree on a course or action, but of trying to implement the vision of the steering committee through working with

City employees day-today in various units. Employees are often looking for efficiencies in how they work and can be resistant to having one more thing to consider, an issue that persist today, said Basto (2020). The way the fiber team is built, they weren’t their own business unit with their own budget, but instead relied on “donations” from other parts of the City (Basto, 2020).

2013 Sale of Envision to Shaw

The City-owned Envision, “a high-speed data communications subsidiary, [that] operat[ed] one of Calgary’s largest fibre-optic networks” (Enmax, 2013) from 2001 to 2013, was sold to Calgary-based cable company Shaw Communications Inc. in 2013 for $223 million (CBC

News, 2013; Enmax, 2013). Throughout its existence Envision remained a profitable arm of

Enmax. At the time of its sale, the network had more than 735 kilometres of fibre-optic cable across the city, connecting nearly 500 buildings offering “symmetrical speeds of up to 10 Gbps”

(Solomon, 2013). Mayor Naheed Nenshi explained the decision saying that the money from the

Envision sale would “help balance the budget sheet at the city-owned utility,” as Enmax was in a turbulent time (CBC News, 2013). Since divesting itself of Envision the City of Calgary has run

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up against legacy rights as it expands its own network. Shaw now owns the majority of rights, due to long-standing agreements it inherited with the purchase of Envision. When Envision became the topic of conversation at a 2014 CRTC hearing where the City was participating both in its capacity as a municipality and a wholesale provider, the tangled legacy rights history was not lost on former CRTC vice-chair Peter Menzies: “You own Enmax, and Enmax owned that, and it sold it to Shaw. So, I’m — none of you had anything to do with this, I understand, but if you may be able to enlighten me as to sort of the history...” (CRTC, 2014b, paras. 7064, 7065).

With the sale the City also lost options to lease Envision fibre, and “existing leases [were] grandfathered for only 10 years” (City of Calgary, 2015a, p. 8). To access that fibre, much of it which once belonged to the City, the municipality must negotiate contracts with Shaw, who may have the infrastructure earmarked for something else, or may charge much higher rates.

SuperNet In the City?

Despite being in the unique position as one of two major urban centres able to take advantage of provincial internet transit infrastructure, the SuperNet does not play a significant role in the City’s network and never has (Basto, 2020). During the mid-2000s there was a debate about if and how the city would implement the SuperNet or if they would build their own. Part

The uncertainty of relying on the SuperNet for municipal operations included unknowns about the type of network it would be and how it would perform – especially when considering utilizing it in mission critical operations such as the City’s light-rail transit network – as well as how service level agreements (SLAs) would work in general (Basto, 2020). Overall, while the

SuperNet was a “great vision” and had positive impact for connectivity for educational institutions, it was a “disaster from an investment perspective,” says Basto (2020). The Alberta

Government invested a substantial amount in the SuperNet but gave up the majority of

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ownership rights to the infrastructure in subsequent operating contracts with Bell and Axia, and then Bell. As a result, to use the network now the province is “paying huge amounts for it – for something they already paid for” (Basto, 2020). That is a marked difference from the City of

Calgary’s strategy: A core principle of the network from the start was that the early investments would pay for themselves over time, allowing the City to never have to buy their own fibre again

(Basto, 2020). Says Basto, that “ownership is key is one of my big philosophies. If you are going to control your network, you should own your network” (2020). The ownership lesson is one

Calgary has experience with. With the sale of assets to Envision around the turn of the century, and the City-owned subsidiary’s later 2013 sale to Shaw, which resulted in the municipality losing legacy fibre leasing options as well as an ongoing struggle over RoW, a battle that remains top of mind today and will discussed in greater detail below.

Network 2.0: The Launch

In the spring of 2013 Calgary was hit with a “100-year flood” forcing evacuations of nearly one tenth of residents from their homes (IBI Group, 2015). The afternoon the waters rose,

Basto headed home. By that evening he was getting frantic calls from city employees with reports of networks going down throughout different business units. Soon it became clear that the entire network was going to go down. The fiber team had been building a parallel network they had been planning for years and were in the last stages. They had just implemented all the network hardware, and were about to enter the testing phase, which they had planned would take six months. “And then the flood happened” (Basto, 2020). That night, faced with rising waters, a downed network, and little other options they decided to migrate to the untested network:

We decide to pull the trigger – we have no choice, the whole network is down – and boom, so we go. We just go to every site and reconfigure the routers, reconfigure fibre at

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all the LRT stations, and we reroute everything. And sure enough, it worked. Within two days we had 95 per cent of the network up. (Basto, 2020)

Though the city had been planning the reimaging a new network since 2005 and began its construction in 2010 (Basto, 2020), they had not been planning on deploying the network so soon. But faced with the natural disaster, making the switch to the fledgling parallel network provided a high-risk, high-reward option that managed to lessen some of the impacts of the flood on city infrastructure by restoring service to some essential municipal services.

A major lesson of the flood, said Basto, was by operating their own network, the City was able to respond quickly during the extreme flood event. Because the City owned the infrastructure, they had the flexibility to configure it and bring networks back online quickly, something an incumbent network would not have been able to do (Basto, 2020). The fibre team reported in 2018, that during the 2013 flood “a catastrophic loss in network resources was mitigated due to the control, agility and capacity afforded through City fibre. This could not have been achieved without full control of the fibre asset” (City of Calgary, 2018a). A major benefit of municipally owned fiber infrastructure is the flexibility allowed, aiding in quick response times to keep emergency networks operational during a disaster.

The deployment of the re-designed network in 2013, included MPLS rings, or

Multiprotocol Label Switching, which adds in redundancy. In the case of one site going down, like in the instance of, say, a flood, the network is able to continue operating. Whereas the City’s old network had one core located in City Hall, which was hit by the flood, the new network has multiple rings with cores in different sites (Basto, 2020). Another change from the way the network used to run is that there is now “less rogue activity” when it comes to fiber builds, said

Basto (2020). When a business unit is faced with a connectivity challenge, they come to the fiber

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team, who has the experience and expertise to solve the issue (Basto, 2020). By having an overarching framework for the City’s network, they can efficiently manage efficiencies within the system.

Table 2: Timeline of Calgary’s Fibre Infrastructure 1997 City builds its first fiber infrastructure. The Water Services business units build an internal network. 1998 Enmax Corporation, an electricity utility, is established as a subsidiary of the City of Calgary. The newly formed entity purchases existing city fibre, leading to the creation of Envision, the utilities’ communication arm. 2001 City administration, led by the then-Calgary Transit director, form a steering committee to discuss municipal fiber infrastructure. The leadership is apt: “Fibre optics are like transportation infrastructure, but for information” (Basto 2020). 2001 - Present Leverage Capital Projects to construct fibre infrastructure, beginning with the deployment of fibre along the light-rail transit line in 2001. 2010 Construction begins on Calgary City Net (CCN), the reimagined network.

2013 The City deploys the reimagined network. The resilient multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) architecture features multiple redundancies to guard against disruption of critical municipal services. 2013 The City-owned but wholly subsidiary fibre operator Envision is sold to Shaw. The deal ends the City’s opportunities for leasing fibre from Envision/SHAW. The City begins planning additional fibre builds to any city sites still reliant on Envision/SHAW fibre. By this time less than 2% of City facilities were still reliant on Envision/Shaw fibre. 2014 ‘Launch’ of the wholesale network. The City leases excess capacity on their fibre network to an organization outside the city for the first time. 2015 The Fibre Infrastructure Strategy, the framework for the growth and operation of the City’s fibre infrastructure is approved by council.

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Significantly, it comes with funding: An $18 million injection in capital funds over three years, 2015-2018. The foundational document guides decision making to date, with updates delivered annually. 2018 Despite the success of the project to date, city-wide budget cuts result in a dramatic decrease in the fiber team’s capital budget over the following three years, 2019-2022. While funding is initially earmarked at $4 million for the period, it is revised to $8 million. 2019 Revenues earned from leasing excess capacity hits $1 million, far above expectations set out in 2015. 2020 The project’s cost savings reach $20 million a year. The number is calculated using the fibre the City uses based on the rates it used to pay Enmax.

Source: Basto, 2020; City of Calgary, 2015, 2018, 2020c.

Network 2.0: The Internal Fibre Network

The City of Calgary’s extensive fibre-optic network connects the municipality’s different business units, networks together city-owned office buildings, services the traffic lights grid, and provides internet access to the police for traditional service, as well as newer applications like the streaming of body camera footage (City of Calgary, 2020c, p. 5). Internally, the municipality uses the fibre infrastructure to deploy 24 different networks including “mission critical networks like 911, Water Services SCADA [supervisory control and data acquisition], Intelligent

Transportation Systems to the essential corporate network which transports all City applications, email, shared drives, and internet traffic” (City of Calgary, 2015a). These networks are wide- ranging, the network that manages clean drinking water for the city has different requirements than the one that the Light Rail Transit system relies on to operate (City of Calgary, 2020c, p. 4).

Calgary City Net is “the City’s largest, most resilient network which provides high bandwidth, redundancy and security for business units” (City of Calgary, 2020c, p. 4). City Administration is

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comprised of more than 230 remote offices, most of which access an intranet, as well as managing “450 traffic controllers, dozens of lift stations, and a multitude of transit and bus stations, traffic and security cameras” (Taylor Warwick Consulting Limited, 2016). By the end of 2019, the network serviced more than “670 facilities and assets (City of Calgary, 2020c, p. 2).

While the MPLS ring and overarching design of the network became operational in 2013, the

City’s infrastructure was slowly built up over the last two decades, with much of it happening during road and transit construction builds. The City has long leveraged infrastructure projects that already involve installing conduit (e.g., for electrical), including traffic controls, street lighting, and LRT construction to install fibre (City of Calgary, 2015a). By the time the 2015

Fibre Infrastructure Strategy was in place, which came with an infusion of capital, the City had already more than 400 km of fibre in place (City of Calgary, 2015a).

Calgary’s Wholesale Dark Fibre Network

The City of Calgary also leases space on their fibre network (City of Calgary, 2020a).

Using a wholesale model, the City does not provide internet service itself, but sells fibre to organizations with the technical know how and equipment who can utilize city fibre to gain access to the internet or for their own internal networks. Of the city’s active fibre strands, about one tenth is leased to third parties (Basto, 2020). In the process of deploying their fibre transport network for municipal services, the City capitalized on the opportunity to install excess capacity, which is relatively inexpensive to do. This ‘dark fibre’ — as data is transmitted over fibre-optic cables through light waves, unused fibre is dark — is then available to be leased (City of

Calgary, 2020a). Organizations including the Calgary Public Library, the University of Calgary, and Cybera, Alberta’s research and education network, as well as school boards, health-care providers, commercial business tenants, and even existing internet service providers utilize the

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City’s facilities. There is no discrimination based on who uses the network, or for what purposes

(City of Calgary, 2020a). Despite their vast physical network, the City does not act as a service provider: organizations can lease physical fibre (City of Calgary, 2020b), but they must provide their own network equipment and are responsible for their own service (City of Calgary 2020c).

Presently, the stated goal is to connect all communities in Calgary, although there are no plans to become a service provider, or build cable to the premises. If the City does extend fibre to a business, under the current model the business pays for the construction, and the City owns the fibre conduit, and “drops the license fee 95% until the business recovers their capital” (Basto,

2020). Even without the provision of retail services, there is a large market for wholesale customers. While many businesses want faster speeds and private connections, economic constraints may limit them from building their own networks. By making available affordable wholesale fibre, the City can bolster the economy by supporting local businesses while

“recoup[ing] initial investments for construction and installation” (City of Calgary 2015a, p. 13).

The City registered with the CRTC as a non-dominant carrier (City of Calgary, 2015a, 2015c), though it was not required to as dark fibre is not regulated. The decision, however, has been beneficial as it has empowered the City to insert municipal perspectives into conversations within the regulatory arena (Basto, 2020).

City Hall’s Fibre Infrastructure Policy

In September 2015, City Council unanimously approved the Fibre Infrastructure Strategy, a document that has guided all successive City policy for the network. An update to the strategy is presented to Council annually to approve, but the principles of the 2015 document are intact.

The document outlined four main challenges to address: Manage City RoW, increase cost efficiencies, protect the City’s right to self-provision of services and to address inevitable

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community inequities (City of Calgary, 2015a; Taylor Warwick Consulting Limited, 2016). By the time the 2015 strategy was written, the City’s ‘ad-hoc’ approach had already resulted in 450 kilometres City-owned fibre (City of Calgary, 2015a, p. 5). The report writers were advocating for City Hall to approve an overarching strategy to meet the demands of municipal “network traffic is doubling every two years” (City of Calgary, 2015a, p. 5).

As both municipal ledgers and policy submissions assert, “it is a cost effective and efficient for municipalities to construct fibre transport facilities at the same time that municipalities carry out large infrastructure projects, such as road work or the construction of transit facilities” (City of Calgary, 2015a, p. 11). The City explained in a recent telecom regulatory hearing about why it has been investing in broadband: “In the process of installing dark fiber throughout the city to all of our streetlights and bus stops and everywhere else — it only makes sense when we are in the process of construction to install excess capacity” (Cable

Public Affairs Channel, 2014, 2:00:16). The cost of laying fiber is 80-85% “putting conduit in the ground” (City of Calgary, 2016), installing fibre optic cable costs about $200 per metre when roads have to be dug up, while by installing fibre into an existing conduit “costs drop dramatically to $11 per metre, as the incumbent pays only for the fibre optic cable and the costs of the installation of the fibre optic cable into existing conduit” (City of Calgary, 2015c).

Although the program has been measurably successful, pulling in revenues for the City, and identifying key growth areas such as implementation of “5G/small cell [technology] and possible collaboration with Enmax for automated meter reading” (City of Calgary, 2018a). the

Fibre Infrastructure Team’s capital budget was cut from $4 million a year to $1 million in the city’s 2019-2022 plan (City of Calgary, 2019b). Calgary’s dark fiber network has been advanced by City officials who do not want to have streets continually dug up, but it also serves to work

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towards getting closer to universal access goals by creating more opportunities for competition in

Canada’s telecommunications market.

The Future: The ‘Smart’ City, IoT, and 5G

With the future of wireless and smart technology becoming a reality, the City of

Calgary’s wired infrastructure has positioned them well to take advantage of it. While 5G proponents tout the benefits of next generation of wireless will bring, its implementation depends on existing wireline technology, it is “a compliment to fiber, not a substitute for it” (Crawford,

2018, p. 29). The benefits 5G offers over the previous generations, are “increases in speed and decreases in latency” (Cave & Webb, 2020, p. 261). Fifth-generation wireless requires a dense urban environment due to its use of short-wave radio frequencies, which is not able to cover the distances that were standard with third- and fourth-generation spectrum: “5G, if it is a phenomenon at all, will be one within dense urban environments, putting cities at the forefront”

(Basto, 2020). When it comes to implementing next generation wireless for the benefit of citizens, the City of Calgary sees itself as being set up to adopt new technologies, whether it be

5G or other innovations, in order to improve community services. A key hurdle for many cities will be a lack of fibre, “if you don't have that foundational infrastructure it can be very difficult”

(Basto, 2020). Basto expects municipalities will see a greater need for fibre in order to utilize wireless technology.

Whatever the benefits of 5G will be for cities, in the immediate term it presents a challenge in terms of managing its implementation. Because 5G signals do not travel long distances, implementing the technology will mean a much denser network of antennas than what currently exists for other mobile technologies. As wireless providers like Bell, Telus, Rogers,

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and Shaw, as well as other organizations, including municipalities themselves, that wish to implement 5G, deploy their networks, they will need places to put these antennas. Locations could include structures purpose-built for implementation, or could be existing structures like buildings, electric poles, streetlights, etc., but should be managed to create efficiencies and reduce signal interference, as well as for aesthetic purposes.

Already, municipalities have run up against a shortage of useable infrastructure for telecommunications. In 2015, the Calgary’s fibre infrastructure team brought the problem to

Council:

In most inner-city communities, the most cost-effective method of deployment is through the use of Enmax poles. In Calgary, Telus and Shaw have contractual rights to access the poles. The City and other providers have attempted to access the poles but have not been successful. Contractual arrangements that create barriers to essential facilities, like poles, increase the costs as it forces the infrastructure underground. (City of Calgary, 2015a, p. 17). At the time, the issue was building out fibre but with the deployment of the additional infrastructure needed to implement 5G the problem is expected to get worse. As of 2020, the

City reported that connectivity demands for 5G, IoT and other smart city solutions were

“increasing every day, and this should be considered the new normal” (City of Calgary, 2020c, p.

6). The fibre team wrote that the large increase in demand is evidence that cities need to adapt by putting in place a cohesive framework lest “new technology [be] ‘bolted on’ to assets” (City of

Calgary, 2020c, p. 6). Cities across Canada are working to implement seamless approaches to managing the dense infrastructure required to implement 5G technology on already crowded city streets (City of Edmonton, 2019; City of Ottawa, 2017; City of Toronto, 2020; City of

Vancouver & City of Surrey, 2019). The City of Calgary has been leading the pack when it

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comes to thinking about 5G and the RoW challenges the technology poses, including going before the courts and federal regulators, as discussed in detail elsewhere in this paper.

Connected sensors do not need 5G technology to operate, and in many ways the ‘internet of things’ (IoT) future is already here. In 2016, the City of Calgary began to build a municipal network for wireless sensors. The long-range wide area network (LoRaWAN) was completed in

2017 and “provides wireless signal coverage for a large footprint in the Calgary region, including the busy downtown core and most of The City’s facilities in the South and East areas” (City of

Calgary, 2020g). The IoT network uses unlicensed spectrum, saving the City from having to participate in costly spectrum auctions, and the devices are open source, with many able to run on battery power for years. The City credits their existing fibre infrastructure, in addition to City- owned radio towers, as allowing them to build the network at “minimal additional cost” (City of

Calgary, 2020g). The IoT network is being used for pilot projects including a “smart” agriculture project at the City-owed Devonian Gardens, a botanical garden on the fourth floor of a downtown city mall. The sensors are being used to measure humidity, soil and lighting in order to increase efficiencies and prolong plants’ lifespans (Semtech, 2018). Other uses include monitoring golf carts at a city owned green to collect data on pace of play to optimize tee times and to dispatch help if needed and to collect data on noise pollution throughout the city

(Semtech, 2018).

The discourse around future planning for municipalities is couched in “smart city” narratives. In that regard, the City of Calgary is equally well positioned. Public-facing information put out by the City doesn’t mince words: “Calgary is a smart city: The future is here and Calgary is ready” (City of Calgary, 2020e). But the evidence is there, and it is enabled by the municipal fiber network. In 2017 Industry Canada launched the Smart Cities Challenge, spurring

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communities across the country to submit proposals to win up to $50 million in funding for their ideas. The one-time challenge offers an interesting baseline to assess where Canadian cities were at, and the how they saw the role of municipalities in adopting and utilizing communications infrastructure. The City of Calgary’s submission stood out for several reasons. In addition to including nods to developing their public Wi-Fi network, and enhancing cyber security, it also included proposals not seen in the same way in other major Canadian city’s submissions, such as:

• Their 5G proposal linked testing the next generation technology with bridging digital

divides. The City proposed developing “a public-private model for zones in areas

accessible to low-income populations that will also be available for industry and research

organizations to test new 5G services and products” (City of Calgary, 2020f, p 19).

• The City warns that substantial increases in connectivity will come with a substantial rise

in costs to municipalities leasing fiber. To manage this, the City proposed a “planned

approach to meeting these connectivity needs through City fibre will insulate The City

from these rising costs” (2018k, p. 2).

• The City’s number 1 stated outcome was the goal that all Calgarians be connected. To

achieve this, they proposed measuring the “current state of digital divide and digital

literacy for low-income Calgarians” (2018k, p. 5).

Finally, proposals about smart city grid and IoT applications are made more possible by

Calgary’s municipal fiber and LoRaWAN networks. The City of Calgary also has a “living labs” project which showcases the ways in which the City is using new technologies to diversify the economy and support Calgarians (City of Calgary, 2020f). The labs project brings together many of the case studies outlined here including the City’s dark fibre, LoRaWAN network, Devonian

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Guardians smart agriculture project, as well as the “first public facing autonomous vehicle pilot in Canada” and technology used to test and meter water flows (City of Calgary, 2020f). In addition, the City offers public Wi-Fi. The service is provided by Shaw, which won the 2013 request for proposal. The company offers the service at no cost, and in exchange receives access to city facilities (City of Calgary, 2020h). The free public network is available at light-rail transit stations, as well as 34 other sites including recreation facilities, arenas, aquatic Centres, and the

Inglewood Bird Sanctuary. (City of Calgary, 2020h).

Another major use case for future telecommunications technologies is cities is Next

Generation 911 (NG911). This advancement will not only offer location data and the ability to text with emergency services, but also include the option to send photos, video or medical records. The CRTC launched their first consultation to establish NG911 regulations in early 2016

(CRTC, 2016b), and is working to set obligations and dates for service providers to provide

NG911 (CRTC, 2020b). The City of Calgary was a leading municipal voice in CRTC hearings to define standards and indicated as early as 2016 that they had started “formal planning and had some approved funding set aside for NG911” (CRTC, 2017, para. 40). This tendency for the City of Calgary to think forward and anticipate how technologies will be used in and by cities has functioned to make them a leading voice in national debates about the role of municipalities in

Canada’s technological future.

The City as Policy Advocate

The City has been an active participant in federal regulatory hearings, advocating for telecommunications policy that considers the unique needs and jurisdictional issues of municipalities. The Canadian government has taken steps to build towards universal access, including a 2016 decision by the federal telecommunications regulator that high-speed

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broadband be classified as a universal service objective (CRTC, 2016a). The decision places high-speed internet in the same category as clean drinking water, electricity, and voice phone service, and carries with it funding obligations. Canada, however, has a long way to go before reaching the aspirational targets set out by the regulator. Even in areas where infrastructure exists that can reach the universal service targets, public and private speed measurement data show that network capacity, even in urban areas, vary substantially especially during peak times, leaving

Canadians struggling to use applications such as video calling, which requires low latency to function (Rajabiun & McKelvey, 2019). While national policy develops, Calgary is leading the way for communities who see a role for municipalities in closing digital divides ahead of waiting for federal and private action. One way the City of Calgary sees a role for municipalities is in offering wholesale, open access to their network at fair rates, while advocating that they be forborne from the same level of regulation as their private counterparts (City of Calgary, 2015c).

The argument being that municipalities’ primary role is to provide municipal services, while building out a network is a positive externality and as such government, or non-dominant, broadband wholesalers are penalized when they are subject to regulations designed for incumbent telecommunications companies. The City is also challenging the status quo of

Canada’s telecommunications framework by asserting authority over RoW access — bringing about questions of jurisdiction (Hogg, 1990) — in a Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta case against incumbent telecom providers (Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta, 2018; Jackson, 2018).

The deployment of 5G, or small cell, infrastructure expectation is expected to greatly exacerbate already-present RoW challenges created by both private and public fibre-optic infrastructure roll outs as it will require building pervasive infrastructure and accessing existing City infrastructure

(City of Calgary, 2019a). The City of Calgary followed their challenge to a RoW bylaw to a

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hearing at the CRTC (CRTC, 2019b). The City has also engaged with telecommunications infrastructure policy at the federal level through participating in the national regulator’s hearing on the review of wholesale services and associated policies, challenging policy at the provincial and federal levels (Bendfeld, 2014; CRTC, 2014b; City of Calgary, 2015c), and by submitting recommendations on the future of Canadian communications legislation (City of Calgary,

2019a), one of the only municipalities to do so (Government of Canada, 2019). In all their advocacy, the goal is to bring to the table “certain polices that are not just market led but have a perspective of public good as well” (Basto, 2020).

Basto credits the City’s ability to participate in policy processes and advocate on behalf of municipalities on a number of factors, the first being having the right people in place.

Participating in CRTC submissions and other federal hearings can be “quite overwhelming and takes a lot of time and expertise. Calgary is lucky to have a team of people to make it work, but not every city has that,” said Basto (2020). In addition, City staff cannot make it work on their own, they need the approval of City council, which not all cities have. Participation in CRTC processes was a key part of the City’s 2015 Fibre Strategy. The stated goal as outlined in the strategy is to “protect municipal interests and influence the direction of accessible broadband for the community” (2015a, p. 6), by adding another infrastructure option for service providers and small businesses. In addition to closing digital divides, the Council-approved vision supported ongoing engagement the CRTC in order to be “in a position to influence federal regulation that can mitigate risks to the public, manage growth, and contribute to a more sustainable future”

(2015a, p. 23). This framing points to the benefits of municipally-driven telecommunications policy both for the social and economic health of Canada’s fourth largest city.

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Benefit to Citizens

While the benefit of a municipal network may not always be clearly seen by Calgarians it can show up in a multitude of ways. One use case for City fibre, and the option not to lease fibre from third parties, is the cost savings to the Calgary Police Service. As body cameras become more prevalent, there is a cost associated in transporting live video footage to a location where it can be stored. Other Albertan police forces using body cameras and leasing fibre, like the City of

Edmonton, have seen data usage costs skyrocket, while the City of Calgary has benefitted by the bandwidth provided by the municipal network (Basto, 2020). The same advantage is seen by other City networks that rely on transmitting live video footage, including Calgary Transit in their use of transit cameras.

The resiliency of mission critical networks impacts all residents. An example of this is a 2012 electrical fire at Shaw Communication’s headquarters, that disrupted 911 service for downtown residents, as well as disruption of radio, TV, and internet service for many, including much of the

City of Calgary’s phone system and service for some fire stations (Massinon et. al, 2012). The

City’s MPLS network, launched in 2013, allows for resiliency in emergencies by having multiple paths data can travel on in case part of the network goes down. Because some of the City services that rely on using fibre infrastructure can impact life safety, the City’s networks were built to be reliable for mission critical services (City of Calgary, 2015a).

While perhaps not at the same level as deploying 911 services, the City’s traffic flows are also improved by the resiliency of the municipal network. The Roads department uses fibre to

“monitor and control traffic signals remotely” and the reliability of the network used creates a better experience for Calgarians (City of Calgary, 2020, p. 4). The City reports that in “2015, the network was only up 65% of the time – but now that a significant portion is on fibre optics, the

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network is up 98% of the time. City fibre reaches over 340 traffic controllers, resulting in an increase of service uptime by 50%” (City of Calgary, 2020, p. 4). In addition to the benefits to

City services both in terms of being able to deliver higher-quality, more reliable services, as well as the long-term cost savings, the City claims the network will “preserve City assets and infrastructure and can contribute to a thriving private sector telecommunications industry” (City of Calgary, 2015a, p. 8). The more fibre the City has available to lease, the more options there are for incumbents and small providers alike to connect assets and citizens.

The network also has a positive impact on the City’s budget, a direct benefit to taxpayers.

When the City approved the Fibre Infrastructure Strategy, cost avoidance was expected to hit

$1.2 million per year as “connectivity and bandwidth increases” (City of Calgary, 2015a). As the

City uses increasingly more data, as it is expected to continue to do, those cost savings go up.

According to the City’s lead fibre optics planner, “before we built our own fibre we used to licence it from Enmax at a rate of $2.50 per strand per year. If we took all the fibre we used today and applied that rate then we come to approximately $20 million per year” in cost avoidance (Basto, 2020). The benefits to the municipality’s bottom line impacts not only what they have saved by implementing the network, but by acting as a non-dominant provider and leasing out excess capacity, they have also created a new revenue stream. In 2019, they reached the milestone of $1 million in revenue, “which represents a 180% increase from 2015 revenues and is well above the $180,000 originally projected” in the 2015 Fibre Infrastructure Strategy

(City of Calgary, 2020c, p. 7) (see appendix, figure 6).

Conclusion Calgary’s forward-looking fibre infrastructure has amounted in tens of millions of dollars in cost savings since the strategy was implemented in 2015. In addition, their decision to lease

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excess capacity has brought in annual revenues of more than $1 million, far above the $180,000 projected in 2015 (City of Calgary, 2020c). Their role as an open access wholesale provider increases competition by offering an alternative network for organizations to lease space from, increasing connectivity and incentivizing economic innovation. Despite this successes and cost savings to the City, Calgary City Council cut the fibre infrastructure team’s budget from $20 million in the City’s 2015-2018 budget to $8 million in their 2019-2022 budget (2020c).

This unique network, paired with Alberta’s long history of community-operated telecommunications infrastructure, rural electricity cooperatives (that could act as a utility model for community-run internet cooperatives), and the Alberta SuperNet fibre backbone (Service

Alberta, 2020), position Calgary as a compelling setting for community network research. This research may serve as a framework for Canadian cities that are considering growing their own broadband infrastructure. Regardless of how other municipalities may see their own needs, and needs of their citizens, Calgary’s leadership in many areas of telecommunication infrastructure can serve as a guide. This research may function to spur imaginations about the role cities have in creating policy and building citizen-owned communications infrastructure.

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Policy Recommendations

Introduction

In this chapter I lay out policy recommendations at the federal, provincial, and municipal level for what governments can do to lessen digital divides. While including recommendations may be traditionally out of scope for a master’s thesis project, I chose to follow within the spirit of critical PEC scholars who endeavour to translate their research into practice. As a former telecommunications policy advocate, both at Cybera and OpenMedia, I chose to include recommendations that may be developed later as an outlet for applying the work I have done here. While I wish to participate in the rigorous world of academic discussion and debate, in order to have my own assumptions challenged and changed as I weigh evidence that contradicts them, I am also driven to participate in creating better policy.

Federal Increase Citizen and Non-Industry Engagement in Policy Processes

In order to reflect policy that serves the interests of citizens, government regulators must hear from those citizens directly. When policy makers hold hearings that receive submissions and remarks only from industry, they use those voices to inform their decisions. As former

CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais has said, “we built a record of evidence for our hearings that was largely based on contributions from the same groups, and we issued decisions that reflected those limited views” (Blais, 2016). Under Blais’ leadership, the federal telecommunications regulator did make strides in including a wider diversity of voices in the regulatory process,

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including by using Reddit to gather comments during their differential pricing practices hearing

(CRTC, 2016c), using an online questionnaire to gather feedback from citizens during their basic services hearing (CBC News, 2016), and by posting video notice of consultation in American

Sign Language ahead of their video relay services hearing, as well as recording the consultation in ASL (CRTC, n. d.). Said Blais (2016): “The public record on these issues — ones that affect their everyday lives — could not be considered complete without such contributions.”

The regulator should continue to engage Canadians where they are, in the ways that work for them. Participation in regulatory hearings have many barriers (Wilkinson, 2020), including the expertise needed to build an argument, knowledge and time needed to navigate the system

(Shepherd et al., 2014), the challenges of being geographically far away and without adequate communications infrastructure to engage (McMahon et al., 2014), and even confidence that your voice will be valuable to policy makers. To counter these disincentives to participation the

CRTC should continue with the ways it has reimagined its consultation process, not just as one- offs, but in a comprehensive way, for more hearings, more of the time. Without adequate funding for public participation in policy, there is little likelihood that the so-called “‘poorly defined’ public interest” will become any more robust (Shepherd et al., 2014, p. 3).

The CRTC also does well as a federal regulator in managing a fund, fed by incumbent telecommunication firms, for “representatives of ‘a group or a class of subscribers’ interested in the outcome of a consultation [to] apply for reimbursement of the costs of participating”

(Middleton, 2017, p. 114). The cost awards are determined by the CRTC based on the time and other associated costs filed by the participants. While the fund is laudable, the claims made by participants are often challenged by the ISPs creating an atmosphere of uneasiness for interveners that they may not be reimbursed for their efforts. This adversarial process of

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challenges to the cost applications also delays the process of reimbursement, which adds another disincentive for participation. The regulator should review its process to ensure that it is as barrier free as possible to incentivize participation.

National Broadband Strategies

In order to fulfill the universal objectives set out by the CRTC nearly five years ago

(2016a), the federal government must create and implement a robust national plan in order to ensure that all Canadians have access to high-speed, affordable internet service. The Liberal government’s 2019 strategy, ‘High-speed access for all: Canada's connectivity strategy’ (ISED), is a step in the right direction but is unlikely to fulfill the goal of universal, high-speed access for all Canadians by 2030 (CRTC, 2016a). The strategy is a continuation of years of policy that relies to heavily on market forces, with bits of help from governments, to connect Canadians. It is also a strategy that has continued to fail to deliver.

An effective vision for ensuring all Canadians are connected requires different strategies, not a continuation of what has been tried to no avail in the past. Michael McNally, a professor of library and information studies at the University of Alberta, pointed to the ineffective results of past national plans during the CRTC’s 2016 review of basic telecommunications services: “you look at the National Broadband Task Force and we were to have universal 1.5 down internet by

2004 and we still don’t. And you look at the Telecommunications Policy Review panel and we were to have ubiquitous internet by 2010 and we still don’t” (CRTC, 2016d, 12631). Without a complete rethinking of governments’ approach to connecting Canadians there is little reason to believe outcomes will differ.

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A key aspect of a coordinated response to the digital divides by the federal government needs to be the recognition that just as there is more than one ‘digital divide,’ there needs to be more than one solution. Any strategy developed must include a set of solutions for barriers to universal access that are based on geography, and another set of solutions to address affordability divides. While there are some approaches that will work to address both issues, a comprehensive, effective strategy will also include plans to address each according to their specific needs.

If the federal government is serious about universal service they must look to alternative strategies, including by supporting projects from the grassroots, or municipal level. A national strategy is needed, but it should not come at the expense of local solutions. In addition, for communities to come to those local solutions, a broad-based knowledge framework must be part of any strategy. The federal government should implement strategies to “catalyze conversations from lower level regional governments [and] provincial governments” (CRTC, 2016d, 12632).

As part of this framework, there is a role for federal bodies, whether that be the CRTC, or ISED, or another department, to bring together success cases from across the country, and lay out best practices, in the model of the 2016 Alberta Broadband Toolkit (McNalley et. al, 2016).

As the CRTC noted in their 2016 submission to the Government of Canada’s Innovation

Agenda, “the provinces and territories are primarily responsible for education and the federal government, together with them, play an important role in the area of employment skills, including those related to digital literacy” (CRTC, 2016e, p. 8). McNally suggests that ‘digital literacy’ itself be reimagined to “include knowledge such as how to understand, troubleshoot, and maintain networks” (CRTC, 2016d, 12574). To further ingrain the local communities in the process, institutions including libraries, schools, and community centres are possible anchors for facilitating skills development (CRTC, 2016d, 12577). This approach for communities to

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implement their own solutions, spurred by skills training, and matched with funding, can create new solutions for connectivity. A national broadband strategy must include the flexibility for municipalities to enact solutions that work for them, in both urban and rural centres.

Affordability. Any effective national plan must also provide concrete steps to address affordability, especially within urban municipalities where it is the barrier to access is not the lack of infrastructure, but cost. The CRTC reported testimony from low-income Canadians who were not able to access government services because they could not afford the costs of connectivity. While governments provide services through online platforms,

“these vulnerable individuals, burdened by social and economic insecurity, came to testify that the level of social assistance available from governments does not take into consideration the cost of connectivity that is nevertheless essential to schedule medical appointments, ensure success in school for their children, facilitate searching for a job, and to do many of the online activities many others take for granted” (CRTC, 2016e, p. 7).

Further, “many low-income Canadians told the CRTC they can afford to pay for broadband service only if they sacrifice other necessities, such as food, clothing, and healthcare” (CRTC,

2016e, p. 1). In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government should immediately roll out a low barrier subsidy program that goes directly to vulnerable Canadians to assist with the high percentage relative to total income, of internet bills. In addition, another solution is discussed below.

Public Dollars for Public Good: Fund Universal Access

When it comes to shifting taxpayer dollars to support what the government has repeatedly insisted is a basic service (CRTC, 2016a; ISED, 2019; Liberal Party of Canada, 2020; Office of

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Prime Minister, 2020), the federal government’s main mechanism is the Universal Broadband

Fund, which was updated in November 2020 (ISED). Canadians access other essential services through the internet, including health care, education, jobs and other economic opportunities, social and mental health supports, among other uses. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the need for affordable, high-quality internet service to access these services. Leaving Canadians without the ability to engage in these ways is unjust. The public interest demands a response from governments that matches the dire need of unconnected Canadians. The federal government should redirect funds form other priorities or consider tax adjustments to fund the roll out of internet infrastructure programs that directly align to digital strategies.

Provincial Support Rural Municipalities

Rural municipalities face unique challenges to broadband or fixed wireless access deployment, as they have limited budgets and limited knowledge pools to draw from. The provincial and federal governments have a unique responsibility when it comes to connecting rural communities. The different challenges for connecting rural versus urban residents require different, specialized solutions. The federal government and its provincial counterpart should create broadband plans that offer unique solutions for rural communities. The plans should include knowledge sharing between communities, as well as make training and funding available from all three levels of government. Alberta has a history of rural communities and remote residents learning from each other through the biannual Digital Futures symposia (McMahon, et al., 2020). While benefits of public engagement included an increased awareness of the benefits of broadband, engagement on its own is limited by the realities of a lack of funding and an overarching strategy (McMahon, et al., 2020). The provincial government should provide a

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funding mechanism for rural and remote residents to attend the events, in the interest of connecting more rural Albertans. Communities themselves should continue to engage with each other in this way, as well as to adopt solutions that work within the context of their own local communities. The fibre network that worked in Olds, may not be feasible in another community, whereas the fixed wireless access model deployed by Viking may not work, or be desirable, for another community. By encouraging knowledge and skill sharing between communities, rural residents are able to understand what worked in other communities, and why, and consider what may work for them. While engagement between communities should be encouraged, it should also be noted that rural communities should not be left to fend for themselves. The federal, as well as provincial, government should facilitate connectivity, while at the same time encourage and fund communities that imagine their own solutions in the absence of affordable, high-speed broadband.

Urban Municipalities: The City of Calgary Fund the Fibre Infrastructure Strategy

The City of Calgary should reverse the cuts made to its Fibre Infrastructure Strategy. The recent cut to the Fibre Infrastructure Strategy budget should be reversed from the current $1 million annually to the previous $4 million. Where feasible, the city should increase this budget, as it supported the existing strategy which has shown to bring in revenues at much higher levels than originally thought possible. Since approved by council, data shows that revenues have well exceeded initial expectations (City of Calgary, 2020c). If allowed to operate as initially approved by council, it is expected that revenues will continue to grow, which works to reduce financial strain for the City’s overall budget, facilitates substantial savings in third-party communication costs, as well as helps to foster innovation throughout the City by strengthening the City’s

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wholesale offerings. The City should continue to provide dark fibre and data centre space to the

Calgary Internet Exchange at no cost. The more interconnection the internet exchange facilitates, the better the internet will be for all Calgarians. In addition, the City currently has a free of charge public Wi-Fi service at light-rail transit (LRT) stations and dozens of public buildings across the city. The free service helps to provide and compliment access for those who are unable to afford a subscription or are faced with limited data or slow connections. The City should continue to offer this service and build it out to more municipal buildings and community centres.

Expand the Wholesale Network

The City of Calgary is a nationwide leader in providing wholesale fibre-optic access and has the opportunity to strengthen innovation, universal access, and an economic renewal — all policy objectives that are part of the city’s stated vision and budget. The City should continue this strategy, advancing the growth of the network where possible to achieve the City’s stated goal of having the Fibre Team be fully self-funded. As discussed in detail throughout this paper, the City benefits from owning and operating their wholesale network through the tax dollars they save on their own operations cost, as well as the flexibility it allows them in responding from daily decisions to extreme events. In addition, the program brings in revenue for the entire administration directly through revenues, and indirectly through the diffuse benefits it has on the economy at large, which is likely to increase as Calgary’s reputation as a broadband leader proliferates.

Measure the Affordability Digital Divide

The City of Calgary should conduct a study, on their own or through partnerships with researchers, to measure the number of citizens without internet access. Faced with “anecdotal

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evidence from community partners that low-income Calgarians […] have limited access to technology on a regular basis” the municipality proposed to measure the digital divide within the city as part of the 2018 nationwide Smart Cities Challenge (City of Calgary, 2018b, p. 19). While the City did not win the competition, they should resuscitate this proposal, which was listed as the number one outcome of their submission. Research is needed to gather quantitative evidence of who is being left behind, and quantitative accounts of how it affects citizens. A better understanding of the scope of the problem within the city will enable the municipality to make informed decisions about how best to provide community services. There is data about the number of Calgarians living in poverty (Eremenko, 2018; Vibrant Communities Calgary, 2019), and federal data about how much low-income Canadians spend on communications services

(CRTC, 2020a); but little information about the affordability digital divide, specifically in

Calgary. Working to get more Calgarians access to affordable, reliable internet service is the first step in delivering on other goals stated as priorities by the municipality, such as connection to one another (2019b).

Expand the Public Wi-Fi Network

In the absence of building infrastructure to provide service for residents or funding for low-income groups to make internet access more affordable, municipalities have an opportunity to lessen the affordability digital divide by providing free wireless access in public areas. While most major Canadian cities have a municipal network there are opportunities to expand it. The

City of Calgary in particular can and should expand its municipal network. Currently free Wi-Fi is only offered at 34 public places (City of Calgary, 2020h), in addition to the LRT line. By comparison, other Canadian cities including Montreal, Edmonton, and Vancouver each have much larger public Wi-Fi offerings (City of Montreal, 2015; City of Edmonton, 2019; City of

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Vancouver, 2020). If the City of Calgary sees offering internet service itself through free Wi-Fi spots as a potential conflict with incumbent service providers, they have other options including another round of a request for proposal for incumbent ISPs to offer the service. Shaw

Communications Inc. won the last competition in 2013, and in return for providing free service received access to City buildings (City of Calgary, 2020h). To expand the service, the City should offer more incentives to Shaw and, because the contract is non-exclusive, other service providers, with the end goal being an expanded Wi-Fi network for Calgarians. The City should consider new models for public Wi-Fi to be implemented when the current contract expires at the end of 2021 (Basto, 2020).

Launch a Municipal Internet Service Provider

Municipalities should consider launching their own public internet service provider, and

Calgary is well positioned to lead this work. The federal and provincial governments should support it as a test bed for other municipalities to aid in the provision of universal access. While the City has explicitly stated they do not “have any intention of being a public telecommunication utility provider” (CRTC, 2014b, para. 7078), they should reconsider. While a municipal internet service provider has some advantages over private ISPs, such as the ability to leverage the fixed costs of other public infrastructure projects against the cost of fibre build outs, the positive impact on the public interest of essential service provision mitigates the downsides of reduced competition. In addition, there are ways to structure a municipal ISP that can diminish potential harms.

Through Calgary’s growing wholesale municipal network, the City is fostering competition by making it easier for smaller ISPs to lease fibre. While operating as a facilities- based provider has many advantages for the municipality and its citizens, the City can best serve

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its community by taking the next step and providing retail services to residential and business customers. To not hamper the opportunities for competition provided by its wholesale business, the City should create an internet service subsidiary that is wholly separate from their dark fibre assets. This would allow for an equal playing field for incumbent, small and would-be telecommunication providers in the City to access the fibre network at the same rate as the City.

To ensure fairness in terms of agreements and rights, a municipal internet regulator should be created. This body would be analogous to the Alberta Utilities Commission, which regulates rates and operations in the province’s electricity, water, and natural gas sectors (Alberta Queen’s

Printer, 2007). Just as those “services are regulated because they are considered to be of vital importance to the safety and well-being of the inhabitants of Alberta and the businesses they run” (EnergyRates.ca, 2020), so too should the internet be regulated. Calgary’s retail service provider’s mandate will be different from that of its competitors, in that its goal is not to bolster revenues, but to connect all Calgarians at affordable rates. By framing broadband service as a public good, users are shifted from ‘consumers’ to ‘citizens,’ which will impact the choices of a municipal service provider.

In striving for this social good, the City will effectively meet its stated policy objective of facilitating a ‘Calgary Comeback,’ the goal of its 2019 economic recovery strategy, by providing the conditions for innovation, research, and the economy to flourish, while facilitating universal access for all its citizens (City of Calgary, 2019c). By keeping the retail service separate from the wholesale facility provider, and by putting in place an arms-lengths overwatch body, the City can continue to “complement the services provided by carriers and indirectly enhance competition in the telecommunications marketplace” (City of Calgary, 2020h). Canada, Alberta, and Calgary all have long histories providing utilities to citizens and have shown it can be done in an efficient,

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fair manner. The current ideological choice to depend on the market to achieve universal access to the internet is inadequate as is evidenced by the failure to provide high-quality service in rural areas and the current levels of affordability which prohibit access for many Canadians. The necessity of affordable internet service is a clear example where “the interests of the community diverge from those of the market” (Trebing, 1969) and government intervention is needed.

Further, while incumbent ISPs decry intervention, they have long benefitted from government policy including tax breaks, public subsidies, and exclusive and legacy rights to infrastructure

(Winseck, 1995), as well as forbearance in their interest. In the absence of national policy as federal regulators wait on industry to deliver, what action should municipalities take? Calgary is well positioned to treat affordable, high-speed broadband access like the “essential service”

(CRTC, 2016a) that it is and move forward with service provision. Without action, tens of thousands of Calgarians will continue to be left behind.

Urban Municipalities: Canadian Cities Engage in Provincial, Federal Policy Making

The regulatory activity by the City of Calgary at the federal level is leading the way for municipalities in the telecommunications space. As City employees navigate through the murky world of regulation, they benefit not only their own citizens, but urban residents across the country. Participating in regulatory hearings, like the CRTC, as well as federal court proceedings and advocating for legislation that balances a wide range of interests and issues is no small feat.

While teams of lawyers at incumbent telecommunication firms become experts, many Canadians are left voiceless as they lack the resources to be able to participate in so-called open government policy proceedings. The City of Calgary is unique in its policy advocacy at the provincial and federal levels. Toronto, which was facing its own unique challenges with the (now defunct)

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creation of Sidewalk Labs, was the only other city to submit recommendations to the Broadcast

Telecom Legislative Review panel. Further, urban municipality submissions to the CRTC are few and far between. The City remains one of the only municipal governments to be active in the regulatory space. In 2014, during the CRTC hearing into the ‘review of wholesale service and associated policies,’ then-Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais commented on the City’s “long history of being quite active in utility proceedings” (CRTC, 2014b, para. 7109). The Chairman said “It's great because it brings a different perspective, but I'm sort of wondering if you are not just the tip of the iceberg of concerns other municipalities should be thinking about and they just haven't done so?” (para. 7109) and pressed the City twice on if it was “unique … from other Canadian cities” in its concerns (paras. 7115, 7119). The comments signal a regulator that is openly asking why more municipalities are not involved in the policy process. The City of Calgary should continue to utilize its newfound expertise in this field, advocating in the interests of Calgarians and Canadians alike. Further, other Canadian municipalities should follow the Western city’s lead and engage with policy at the national level.

In addition, to participating in advocacy on its own, the City of Calgary should continue to engage with other municipalities to share information and to advocate for the role of municipalities in the telecommunications space. Making connections between cities is a way to share knowledge about the creative ways each city is dealing with the challenges and opportunities brought about by technological innovation. As well, it is a chance for them to communicate about their relationship with Canada’s incumbent service providers in relation to

RoW and other issues that the national incumbents are dealing with from city to city. By sharing information, they can empower each other in their negotiations with dominant ISPs. Canadian municipalities should also continue to work together to share local solutions to digital

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connectivity challenges for both the municipalities themselves, as well as for residents Just as the

Federation of Canadian Municipalities allows for cities to share knowledge and gain traction in negotiations with larger levels of government, cities can use that model when it comes to empowering localities on the topic of telecommunications policy.

Support Public Internet Exchanges

All levels of government should support local IXPs. There is substantial evidence that they improve the overall quality of the internet for all Canadians (Woodcock and Edelman, 2012;

OECD, 2020), as well as provide benefits when it comes to data security and privacy (Clement and Obar, 2015). Other municipalities should follow Calgary’s lead and if they have fibre infrastructure, they should consider peering with other networks at IXPs in their own communities. An official partnership with an IXP, especially one that is starting out, can help to lend it legitimacy as it works to grow. A connection with an IXP is a low barrier, low-cost way a municipality can improve internet service within local communities.

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Conclusion

Three decades after the birth of the world wide web, 15 years after Canada’s National

Broadband Task Force’s deadline for universal service (NBTF, 2001), and amid a global pandemic, it is clear that high-speed, affordable internet service is as essential as water, electricity, and phone service to participate fully in social, political, and economic life. The internet is foundational infrastructure that impacts our livelihoods, emotional wellbeing, and ability to engage within our communities. Leaving people without access – whether that be because governments are not willing to intervene in order to ensure that infrastructure is built or that because once it is built, we rely on the market to dictate who deserves access – should no longer be acceptable.

In addressing the central theme of this thesis “Are alternatives to commercial, corporate

Internet networks possible? If so, how are these networks imagined, built, and operated?”, I looked to five main themes to guide my methodological framework. In addressing the theme of

“how networks are imagined and created” I found that each community was inspired to build their network because of a need that was not being met, or because they saw the network as a more efficient solution to what existed. The issue of “problems of existing frameworks,” was made clear by government reports on the internet adoption, usage, and access rates across the country. While the current economic model for the delivery of telecommunication services has some benefits, according to federal data, many Canadians do not have access to the internet in many cases due to geographic or affordability digital divides. To consider “state support: usage

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of existing public infrastructure or funds,” I asked network creators what public infrastructure they were using, and how and if they accessed government funding, as well as analyzed available data made public by the networks. As municipalities, the Town of Viking’s Internet Service and the City of Calgary’s wholesale network were both built within the municipalities’ budgets, making use of taxpayer dollars. Viking does make use of the Alberta SuperNet, whereas Calgary does not. The Calgary Internet Exchange Point has largely been funded by member contributions, though it does connect to the City of Calgary’s network. I was also concerned with

“knowledge sharing between communities” and poised the question to each of my interview subjects. The Town of Viking has had informal talks with surrounding communities and plans to continue to do so in the future, The City of Calgary is part of a group of large Canadian municipalities discussing digital issues, and staff also hold informal talks with colleagues in other cities. The Calgary Internet Exchange has been a key benefactor of knowledge sharing between communities, with their model lifted almost wholesale from the City of Toronto’s, as well as other coordination between volunteers within the internet exchange community. To address the issue of “the usage/impact of network,” I asked interview participants directly. The

Town of Viking’s Internet Service is being used by a fraction of their community, though administrators expect to see continued growth as the network infrastructure expands, and as

Viking residents are let out of existing internet service contracts with incumbent providers. The

City of Calgary’s wholesale network is used by the City’s business units, which is what it was designed for. In addition, a tenth of the network’s excess capacity is utilized by non-municipal organizations.

Throughout this thesis, I focused on how the development of alternative internet networks can help to achieve universal access. Taking the Town of Internet Viking Service, the

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Calgary Internet Exchange, and the City of Calgary’s network as my artifacts of study it is evident that, in all three cases, the communities they exist within benefit. While each network profited from the imagination of the creators interviewed above, they also exist within historical and political contexts. Each were aided by the ideas and communities built around the Alberta

SuperNet, if not from the backbone network itself. Only the Viking case study used the physical infrastructure built by the province, but in the case of the City of Calgary and the internet exchange, both drew upon a discourse of alternatives to the status quo. While the SuperNet itself can largely be considered not to have achieved the increase in connectivity and decrease in costs of internet access for Albertans, the legacy of discussion and action within the province are likely to have contributed to envisioning a different way of doing things, and a culture of putting those ideas into practice. Each network is also affected by a larger policy framework, especially regulations from the federal government, which oversees telecommunications in the country.

The City of Calgary has been shaped by the decision of the federal government not to enact policy at the local level. In the absence of national action, the City has forged ahead with its vision for a connected future, and in the process is challenging federal regulators on issues such as RoW and by moving to classify itself as a non-dominant carrier, both of which have implications not just for Calgarians but for the majority of Canadians who live in the country’s urban centres.

Similarly, town administrators in Viking saw a need for higher quality internet within their community and an absence of federal and provincial policies that maximize the public interest. They attempted to work within the accepted economic structure of relying on private industry to connect them but confronted with high costs they too rejected the status quo as

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‘natural.’ Their flexibility in thinking and commitment to the idea that the internet should be a utility was instrumental in setting up the network they have today.

While Calgary and Viking are municipalities, and as such are steeped within the structure of multi-level governance, the Calgary Internet Exchange benefited from growing out of a community of network engineers and technologists. Broadly, this allows them more freedom from the structure of formal political systems, but the community itself also specifically embodies an open-source ethos that while not opposed to industry-led, for-profit solutions, does not buy into the myth of ‘is-ism,’ that the way things are, are the way things must be (Lessig,

2006). And while the IX is also not a traditional network like the other two case studies, the interconnection it facilitates allows for alternatives for smaller, independent networks, like

Viking and Calgary, to operate by connecting to others. de Raadt, like McLeod and Basto, saw a community that was not being served by the existing economic and political frameworks, and imagined a way to intervene that worked in service of the public interest. While each mediation of the three case studies is not large in scope, each embodies a critical gaze towards widely accepted communication myths, specifically that market forces are the best, and only, way to close existing digital divides. Taken together, their interventions offer a framework for local, community-based problem solving, that can and should be supported by governments whose role it is to maximize the public good. Each of these alternative networks is so far a success story due to individual and community actions, but all will benefit from policy decisions at the structural level to remove barriers to their operation and, ideally, incentivize their growth. Communication regulators, as well as scholars and advocates who aim to shape policy, should see each network as a chance to reimagine what networked media that functions in the interests of citizens can look like.

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Appendix

Figure 1: Map of Alberta’s SuperNet (Service of Alberta, n.d.)

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Figure 2: Town of Viking Internet Service speeds, about 500 metres from the grain elevator, as of November 11, 2020. (McLeod, D, 2020)

Figure 3: Town of Viking Internet Service current and planned towers. (Town of Viking, 2020)

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Figure 4: YYCIX network map, as of early 2020. (YYCIXd, 2020)

Figure 5: YYCIX network map, showing future additions in progress. (YYCIXd, 2020)

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Figure 6: City of Calgary’s past and current revenues from city-owned fibre infrastructure. (City of Calgary 2020c)

180