The fiber of contempt

If 280,000 households in Quebec do not yet have access to high-speed Internet by 2021, it is only because it would not be profitable to bring it to their isolated Howell.

Not only citizens of remote areas, but also residents of villages less than an hour away from Montreal or Quebec seem to have a common explanation for this problem. We cannot rule out this umption of profitability while trying to understand why so many people are kept in the middle of the XX^E Digital Century, in the midst of an epidemic.

In the face of the residents

If this is why digital partitioning can be explained, how can we explain that the chalet of Mirco Bibik, the CEO of Bell, is connected to the Internet via a fiber service, much like the chalets of a few dozen affluent neighbors? Around isolated water? To reach the luxurious second homes of Lake Peminchangan, how did we cross the on-board optical fiber on the edge of the village of Lock-Saint-Mary in the face of its 1000 residents, without even taking the opportunity to connect their house or their city hall?

It should also be noted that Ottawa and Quebec subsidized two-thirds of the installation, although this was not conditional on the connection of 600 homes in Lock-Saint-Mary. Government programs, while effective, do not seem to be too demanding, to say the least.

At this point, unless Bell decides he does not want to make money, we need to look elsewhere than the lack of profitability for the motivation not to connect citizens living next to its fiber optic lines.

His worst customer service in Canada – on top of what he already can’t handle, is unable to cover a few thousand customers.

Willingness to do

Incompetence should not be attributed to abuse which is generally sufficient to explain. In the case of Bell, it is tempting to believe that it is a mixture of the two.

We live in a capitalist system. If Bell is not interested in serving Quebeckers in the area, his CEO will look over his car when he goes to his chalet, which is his right. However, it is one of the few things that allows videotron, kozeko and non-profit organizations to do it themselves without hating the world.

In 1962, electricity was nationalized to electrify rural areas, and Quebec Solidair now proposes to do the same with optical fiber. We may have to come to this, but before we get there, can we at least allow those who are already willing to do that work?

In the end, it would have been obvious if Bell had been a part of completing the connection to Quebec. In the near future, this will be an important condition for our collective well-being that will cease to get out of the way and hinder our development.