Historic meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia

I had the privilege of attending what I think was a historic and potentially revolutionary meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Tuesday. The provincial government had convened an all day conversation about the broadband needs of rural communities, and how to best get affordable broadband connections to those communities.

It was Garth Graham, one of the real pioneers of the community technology movement, who grabbed me after lunch and pointed out that as far as he knew, it was the first time ever that four different groups of people met in the same room to talk about rural broadband problems. Represented at the meeting were:

• Provincial government leaders, who had convened the meeting and wanted to explore ways to use the telecom buying power of the provincial government to get better broadband services into rural communities.
• Large and small telecom access and service providers, including the incumbent telecom providers Bell and Telus.
• Community network managers and leaders; in British Columbia, community networks play a key role in providing Internet access in rural parts of the country, and collectively they have thousands of customers.
• Community leaders, who were there to share their needs, goals, and aspirations, and to learn about what they can do to get affordable broadband to their communities more quickly.

It was a remarkable meeting, with open, frank, and stimulating dialogue from all four groups. The fact that it happened, that so many people attended (over 50 people), and that there was such honest speaking, listening, and understanding, suggests that we have truly turned a corner in beginning to identify and actually implement community telecom solutions that have a chance of meeting both public needs (the common good) and private needs (increasing shareholder value).

The group agreed that more meetings were needed to hash out details, but there was remarkable consensus that the problem is largely one of policy, administration, and management, and that this is not a technology problem, in the sense that it is NOT a matter of just picking wireless, or fiber, or Gigabit Ethernet, or so on. All parties agreed that communities and regions need some new and yet to be determined entity to help with telecommunications issues (infrastructure, access, services, policy, regulation).

British Columbia has long been a leader in this area, and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to witness history in the making. If British Columbia is able to provide some working examples of new ways for public and private partners to work together to make the telecom pie bigger and more affordable, it truly will be revolutionary.