I always think I’m funny when demonstrating how I use my cellphone at the cabin.
I stand on one foot, lean waaay out to the right, and pretend to scream into the device while precariously perching on the edge of the deck.
I admit I’m over-dramatizing the situation somewhat, but not by much. Sometimes, all the leaning and perching and screaming does exactly fiddly. If there’s no reception, there’s no reception.
Having no cellphone reception was not funny at all in southeastern Manitoba recently, when people were fleeing wildfires but could not call for help.
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The Rural Municipality of Piney, by all news and political accounts, has had bad or even non-existent service for years. A CBC story noted that Manitoba emergency experts have warned about the poor cellular coverage for over a decade, if you can imagine.
This reminds me of a story told by a student at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, where I once worked. Not having his permission to repeat this, I will explain that he hailed from a tiny, mountainous, poor country in the middle of the Asian continent. Every person in every village had a cellphone. It was cheap, and it worked. The student, quite rightly, laughed at the expensive Canadian cellphone scene, with elusive range outside the main cities.
Even in the cities, coverage can be interesting. Try using certain providers from your basement, and good luck.
Then, of course, there is the quite remarkable situation SaskTel finds itself in. While it suddenly received a reprieve, it looked for a while like SaskTel would be abandoning its high-speed service to about 8,000 rural customers.
Wireless service was to be discontinued by the end of 2012 because of a reallocation of broadband spectrum by Industry Canada and replaced by more expensive and less nimble service that also required the purchase of new hardware. SaskTel now has until March 31, 2014, to solve its rural wireless issues.
Sadly, I’m a bit of a tech idiot and cannot offer brilliant solutions. But greater minds than mine must solve Canada’s high-tech problems. Governments talk ceaselessly about innovation, modern economies, better productivity and treating its rural citizens like real citizens. Between policy and industry regulation, it’s time they walk the talk or stop squawking about Canada being a nation connected to this century.
