EastLink broadband on track in Queens County

EastLink was selected by the province of Nova Scotia to provide wireless Internet coverage to most of Western Nova Scotia by the end of 2009.

On Feb. 10, Committee of the Whole got a progress update from EastLink officials on where they are now, and on future development.

Stephen Banks, Site Acquisition Specialist with EastLink, outlined the status of 12 towers to be put up in Queens Co.

In Northfield, EastLink has acquired property and is getting ready for construction, weather dependant.

In North Brookfield they are working on getting the property to build on.

In Harmony Mills, a new higher tower will replace an existing 20 m tower for greater range. The new tower will be installed before the old one is taken down.

The situation in West Caledonia is similar to Harmony Mills, with construction to begin depending on the weather.

In Molega, they are working on getting the property, but believe it will be soon.

In the Wellington/Buckfield area, they have a property and all other approvals. Weather depending, construction is ready to go.

Greenfield and the area around Highway #8 close to Pleasantfield have proved challenging, because of Nav Canada rules about towers surrounding an airport. Two towers need to be installed in that area. On one, they have a location in mind and are working on getting the land. The other is proving more complicated, and they have yet to find a suitable site.

In East Port Medway, they are using an existing ‘Bell Canada’ Tower to put the equipment on. They are currently going through the approval process.

In River Head, they are still working on getting a suitable property. In Port Joli, they are working on getting property, but are in negotiations with a landowner at the moment.

In Granite Village, they are ready to begin surveying for a site and for public consultation.

With the exception of East Port Medway, all towers are 35 m (120 ft) fibreglass composite structures, each with a possible range of 20-30 km depending on the topography of the area.

On the map, there are areas that look like the service will not reach them, and the reason is the areas are very sparsely populated. However EastLink is not forgetting about them and is still going to bring coverage to those areas. “Once the network is deployed, and we know the actual coverage, we’ll know which ones won’t be covered,” said Banks, adding he anticipates it will only be a few homes. “We’ll use small repeater sites to reach those areas. They are just small 15 metre wooden poles that don’t take much time to prep.” “Our mandate is to provide coverage and access to high speed Internet services to the entire province,” said David Craig, Director of Wireless Implementation with EastLink. “The reasons for having the sites where they are is to provide this. We’ve coupled that obligation with minimizing the number of new sites we construct.”

Counc. Peter Waterman asked if companies with existing towers were preventing EastLink from using them, forcing the company to construct more towers.

Craig said, “A new rule from Industry Canada from the end of 2007 is to provide mandatory access to towers by all third parties. The rational is nobody wants a proliferation of towers all over the place.”

He said the reason Queens Co. has so many new towers is that many existing ones did not have the range they needed to cover everyone. In Southwest Nova Scotia out of the almost 120 locations identified for equipment, 60 of those are going to be co-located on other towers.

Counc. Doug Adams asked if cellular phone service would go online as well, since Greenfield is currently without any service. “There are no specific plans as of yet, but the intention is at some point to offer cellular service,” said Craig. “Outside of this project, EastLink has acquired spectrum in the AWS band to provide cellular service in Atlantic Canada. Those plans are being worked on as we speak by another group within EastLink.”

Deputy Mayor Darlene Norman was eager to know when the service would be fully operational in her area, but Craig said they do not have firm dates as of yet.

He added as each tower is finished, customers would be able to connect to the service. “We’ll have better dates as time goes on, but at this stage, we can’t commit to anything other than Dec. 31, 2009.”