Bruce Street is celebrating its 15th year in business and (despite Covid) are excited for what 2020 and beyond has in store! As always, thank you to all of you for choosing Bruce Street as your internet and technology services provider.

Rural Fibre Is A Reality!

In 2019, Bruce Street began working with the residents of the Summit View subdivision in the Town of the Blue Mountains to provide fast, reliable internet service over a rural fibre optic network. We are pleased to say that we have almost completed this exciting fibre project! 30 of the 35 occupied properties are now connected and are enjoying internet speeds up to 100Mbps in a rural environment!

A brief history of the project. Bruce Street has been providing reliable wireless internet service to the Blue Mountains, Meaford and Beaver Valley areas for over 15 years. However, we realized that fibre connectivity is the way of the future and have been working with the Municipalities of Blue Mountains and Meaford to start installing fibre optic cable. We were approached by a resident of the Summit View subdivision and subsequent conversations determined that this would be a great pilot project to install this technology.

We already had Municipal Access Agreements in place with the Municipalities but we also struck an agreement with the area residents in order to access Municipal and private properties to install the fibre. Construction was to start in fall of 2019 but snow came early and the bulk of the actual construction was delayed till spring of 2020. We have now completed the bulk of the project and are pleased to say that the service is up and running and the area residents are enjoying internet speeds that would otherwise be unavailable in a rural setting.

We would like to say thank you to the area residents for their patience and cooperation in making this project a reality. It has proven that local affordable rural fibre projects are possible and Bruce Street looks forward to greatly expanding it's rural fibre network throughout the area!  

SWIFT Rural Internet - Fact or Fiction?

If there is one thing in particular that Covid-19 has illustrated, it is our reliance as a society on reliable internet service. Whether it is work, education, staying connected to others, or entertainment, this pandemic has forced many of us to reconsider how we function on a day to day basis. Should we continue to work from home? Will children be allowed to go back to school? And so on...

This issue is further heightened in rural communities as it can be difficult to access any, let alone dependable service in many remote locations. This was further exacerbated with many urban residents choosing to hunker down in rural locations to avoid congested areas. Suddenly, normal escape havens required internet service, or better than what was previously required. People who were used to having 250Mbps packages in large urban centres were figuring out out to get by with 10-50Mbps speeds. Fortunately, most people have discovered they can actually get by with rural speeds.

However, the CRTC has declared that every Canadian resident is entitled to 50Mbps download and 10Mbps upload speeds! Along came Covid and most government agencies have jumped on the rural broadband platform and are using it as a soundbite to show that they are concerned about their rural constituents. While it is a worthwhile pursuit, like most things there is a lot to consider before promising to deliver such lofty goals. Canada is the 2nd largest country in the world and our size and geography, combined with our widespread smaller population makes it extremely difficult to attain these goals. People often try to compare our broadband internet services and pricing to European countries. The reality is, most of those countries would easily fit into a corner of Southern Ontario. Their population density and smaller size make it much easier to provide localized services at competitive price points. Regardless, people expect more local internet for less money. So what is the solution, particularly for our region? Enter SWIFT.

You may have heard that SWIFT (Southwestern Integrated Fibre Technology) is going to be the answer to our rural internet problems. Fibre internet is on its way according to the press releases and many local municipality governments have championed its promise to deliver. However, all that glitters is not gold. While the premise is great, the reality is a much different story.

The SWIFT initiative promises that high speed rural internet will be available throughout Southwestern Ontario. However, their own estimates show that there are approximately 230,000 underserviced premises in SW Ontario. By their own admission, they will only be able to connect 50,000 of those homes and business with their current funding. That still leaves 180,000 without a reliable rural solution!

Regionally, Grey County has 4,800 km of roads of which 2,900 are currently considered underserviced. SWIFT representatives have stated that if all of their current projects are built, they will address about 329 km of those underserviced areas. That means only 11% coverage for the $3 million in loan funding that the County has guaranteed to SWIFT to complete these projects!

Furthermore, their projects will primarily be focused on higher population density rural areas. That means they will be targeting rural subdivisions that, in most cases, already have some form of local coverage. What that means in the long run is It further strands the "last mile" residents. Those more isolated rural residents rely heavily on wireless solutions for whatever service they can get which is usually supplied by smaller local providers. If SWIFT does move in and take over more populated rural areas than the smaller providers will lose their market share and potentially be forced out of business. This would mean the last mile residents would than lose their only links to available services. 

So in essence, SWIFT's entry into the local rural market would only benefit a small minority of the rural population and would strand the truly isolated residents as it is cost prohibitive for SWIFT to provide fibre solutions for their locations. Under the auspices of, be careful what you wish for, make sure you know the truth behind the promises that are being made. SWIFT has sucked up more than $300 million since its inception leaving little or no support for small local providers. The irony is, if even a small percentage of that money had been dedicated to supporting local players, there would already be more extensive local coverage available. Bruce Street is already pursuing further reaching rural fibre projects without government funding and looks forward to truly supporting our local rural neighbors. Stay tuned!

VoIP
Phone Solutions

Tired of paying exorbitant home phone prices? Ask about our 'Voice Over Internet Protocol' phone solutions.

Pay a fraction of regular phone services and call worldwide for pennies. Purchase a VOIP phone or an adapter to convert your existing phone and port your existing number.

Ask us how you can use the internet to connect to the world for less.

High Speed
Rural Internet

Bruce Street can provide dependable and reliable Rural and Urban services with unlimited plans for no limits on when you can download or how much. No data rate bursting to inflate advertised speeds.

We also provide custom hotspots for applications such as campgrounds, trailer parks, businesses, etc. that wish to offer temporary internet access on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Bruce Street Technologies newsletter is a monthly publication that will include important information such as package introductions or changes, new access point announcements, and other topics of interest regarding our services. If you do not wish to receive this information, you can opt out by clicking on the "unsubscribe from this list" link at the bottom of the newsletter.