Final Mile rural internet project nears completion

Tower bound for Beaver Mines area passes over Beauvais Lake
Shane Bieda image

Toni Lucas

The Final Mile Rural Connectivity Initiative (FMRCI) is a joint effort between Service Alberta and Agriculture and Rural Development to connect currently un-served Alberta households to high-speed Internet.   "The government is trying to drive high speed internet to 98% of Canadians," explained the co-owner of Tough Country Communications (TCC) Brock Lounsbury, who was an engineer with Bell Communications before buying the business, which he currently co-owns*. Tough Country is an internet service provider (ISP) has entered into a partnership with the MD of Pincher Creek and the Alberta Government to buy new towers and equipment.

Helmet/tower GoPro camera - Shane Bieda; video and photos - Chris Murray, Susan Lounsbury, Toni Lucas

Tough Country installed three towers in MD of Pincher Creek locations last week, with one remaining to be installed.

"It is relatively low population density here, but compared to up north, Nunavut, or northern Saskatchewan, it is quite dense," said Lounsbury.  "The Final Mile is how they are describing it in a broad and general sense, nationally.  We are by nature a final mile service provider, a last mile carrier. That is our business. We have been in this business for eight years."

After the MD of Pincher Creek No. 9 decided to apply for the FMRCI as recommended by Director of Operations, the proposed project was tendered and ultimately awarded to TCC to provide design, construction, project management, and the operation and maintenance of the service once in place.  The MD received $200,000 from the Province in September of this year, sealing the deal.

From our October 1, 2014 story on the subject:

The $266,000 budget (not including GST), subject to possible necessary revisions in accordance with the contract between the Municipality and TCC, is as follows:

     4 Tower Structures delivered to location    $66,400
     4 Tower Accessories (Safety cables, mounts etc.)  $17,036
     4 Cabling and Patch Panels   $4,000
     8 Data Switches   $2796
     4 Site Enclosures  $14,000
     4 Power Systems   $45,120
     4 Electronics Cabinets    $4,796
     4 Sets of Radios and Antennas  $14,664
     4 Fencing  $16,000
     4 Site survey, prep and erection   $81,18
    
                      Total:   $266,000

75% of the project is to be covered by the $200,000 Rural Final Mile grant,  $25,000 (13%)  is to be covered by the Municipality, and $32,340 (12%) is to be covered by Tough Country Communications, with the difference remaining to be divided between TCC and the Municipality.

Chris Murray photo

"What we are trying to do, is that we are trying to go into areas that are not commercially viable for us.  Internally we call them community service towers," Lounsbury explained.  "To be commercially viable we need to see 50 customers to make an expenditure on a tower.  Just to compete with other businesses, that's what we have to do."  The company currently services approximately 1,400 connections.  The new towers that were being installed are an 82' tall fibre composite construction that is buried 12 feet into the ground.  The towers were airlifted into place with the assistance of Alpine Helicopters.  Alpine used a Bell 212 HP that had the capacity to lift the 3,000+ pound towers.  Placing three of the towers took most of the daylight for pilot Todd Cooper on Thursday, October 30.  Alpine provides adventure flying tours and helicopter skiing as well as performing commercial work and firefighting. Lounsbury said that he has used other helicopter companies in the past, but the weight of the new towers came with unusual requirements.

Four towers laid out south of town ready for transport
T. Lucas photo

Alpine's crew included Base Manager Kent Draper, pilot Todd Cooper, and ground crew Craig Charest.  Because of the tower weight and flying distance considerations the pilot had to pick up one tower in Pincher Creek, fly it out to Maycroft where it was set down, and then refuel the helicopter refuel before picking up the tower again and taking it up on top of a ridge to be permanently placed.  After three of the towers  and equipment were set in place, Lounsbury and Draper offered a short pleasure ride to those that were helping out for the day.

Bob Lounsbury
Chris Murray photo

The four tower destinations are:

• Beaver Mines to service north Gladstone Valley,  Seven Gates, and Lee's Lake
• Pincher Creek Ranches to service East Gladstone, Beauvais Lake and Christie Mines
• Maycroft area
• Spread Eagle Road to service the Spread Eagle area and Shell Plant area

Kent Draper

The additions to the network will also help service communications for MD and EMS vehicles in the area.  "As part of this, the intrinsic benefit to the people and the MD is that we can locate those radios," Lounsbury explained.  "Any one of these areas have been jointly picked for the reason of   serving unserved customers and adding adding potential for EMS and MD radios." Tough Country currently has 36 point of presence (PoP) that will expand to 40 after these towers are running.  Their service area includes DelBonita, Granum, and Wardner BC.  "We have approximately 15 to 20 thousand square kilometres on our footprint."  Lounsbury believes that 70 to 100 residents in the MD of Pincher Creek will gain service through this project.

Chris Murray photo

"Our system is basically a fixed location radio network," said Lounsbury.  "Though we could offer wifi, we run into significant drawbacks trying to do that.  Our technology is based on a Wimax platform.  We are a fixed wireless internet service provider, or a WISP.  That is our core business, and we are also in the business of managed IT (information technology) solutions. That is a subset in our business."  He said the reason they expanded in this direction was to serve his existing customers better.  Lounsbury found that there were a lot of questions that his customers had, questions that were not strictly part of Tough Country's business model, but still needed the support.  "We were the closest thing to a tech they have got."

Tower detail
T. Lucas photo

The changes in the system will also be beneficial to existing customers, as Tough Country has  upgraded there capacity in ways that will improve service overall.  "As part of our obligation, we have doubled our capacity in the areas that these towers are going into," explained Lounsbury.  "Over the last year, we have added 10 times the capacity in our backbone.  This month, we are going to again double our upstream capacity in the Pincher Creek area."

Chris Murray selfie inside helicopter

"We are using really high end radio technologies to do this it is costly equipment, that we have grown into."  Tough Country also uses the Axia supernet fibreoptic system that exists in Pincher Creek.  "It's not commercially viable to trench fibre optics into people's houses.  I can buy a radio today that can do gigabit/second transfer. If I can get you 5 Megs of bandwidth to your house, that's enough for applications, gaming, downloading and most uses residential people want."  He said that currently the entire hamlet of Beaver Mines does not usually take more that 20 megabits of capacity.  "People in general talk in terms of storage.  Network speed is in measured in bits."

Chris Murray photo

"We've spent our money building a backbone so that when we drop these towers, these people are going to see vicious performance.  Our part of the deal was that we would increase capacity so that when these towers came on it would be lightning fast.  The people that are going up on these towers will have as good or better internet than is supplied commercially in town.  This is the latest technologies in the tower equipment.  We have increased our outbound capacity by 40 times since 2006. That shows you how the nature of the beast has changed."

Fuelling up in Maycroft before setting the final tower of the day
T. Lucas photo

Lounsbury said that the new towers are the fourth generation of equipment upgrades since Tough Country went into business, and they expect to upgrade again within the next year to two years as new equipment is developed.  "It will never end.  We will never stop rolling our technology.  It will get better and faster."

Related story:
Rural Final Mile project underway
Related links/sources:
Alpine Helicopters
Tough Country Communications
Final Mile Rural Connectivity Initiative

Setting up a tower
Shane Bieda image

*corrected for accuracy, as noted in Brock Lounsbury's comment below, he purchased the business, not started it as previously stated.  He is currently a co-owner.