Funding rural broadband: Whatever it takes

29.05.2012
For rural communities looking to get ultra-fast broadband speeds increasingly seen in cities, there's only one obstacle: Money.

Getting it is the trick.

Speakers at a which wound up Thursday, had no shortage of ideas of how to get it, which boiled down to this: Whatever works.

The problem is some of the ideas just may not practical in small communities.

For example, there were envious glances when the CEO of Waterfront Toronto, which is revitalizing part of that city's lakeshore with a housing project for 115,000 people, said it will provide residents with a combined 100 Mbps Internet service, telephony and television service for $100 a month starting in January.

How did it do it? The agency, which controls the 2,000 acre site and has $1.5 billion in seed capital from three levels of government, set the terms to a service provider. In return, the provider gets a captive customer base.