A local technology firm, SANE Consulting Inc. has been working for some time to provide education and information to local residents and business regarding this project.

On Feburary 2009, SANE Consulting hosted a seminar to help educate City of Medicine Hat staff, business leaders, politicians and developers. Chat News 6/3 did a short story on the event. Josh Sehn, the president of SANE Consulting Inc. has been working to bring the "Supernet" to Medicine Hat and area business and residents.

In 2003, the Government of Alberta spearheaded the Alberta SuperNet, an infrastructure project which connects over 400 Alberta communities with 12,000 km of ultra high-speed fibre. The Alberta SuperNet connects approximately 4,200 provincial and municipal facilities.

But according to Josh, "The Government of Alberta's agreement with Bell and Axia, the primary operators of the Alberta SuperNet, failed to provide interconnection for local citizens including doctors, business and residents. The result of this shortcoming is that the majority of Alberta residents fail to realize the potential benefits of this truly high-speed network. We are still stuck using 1999 internet connection technologies and most customers are still using old coaxial and copper cables that were installed decades ago. This creates a multitude of challenges. Canada used to be considered a broadband infrastruture leader, now we've become laggards."

The CBC recently reported on a Harvard study that concluded, "Canada has some of the poorest high-speed internet service in the developed world and is an example of what not to do from a policy perspective". Canada was ranked 22nd overall out of 30 countries surveyed by Harvard for this study. Other researchers believe even that figure might be optimistic. According to Speedtest.net, who performs over twenty million tests monthly around the globe, Canada ranks 38th in terms of download speed.

SANE Consulting hopes to bring advanced communication services via ultra high-speed fibre optics to every residential and commercial parcel in the community. The traditional copper and coaxial infrastructure that the big players use to provide internet, telephone and television service to local residents has been installed 30 or more years ago. This old infrastructure is becoming more and more costly to maintain and local residents are paying the price.  

"This is a challenging project, one major hurdle was to find and attract investors that are willing to help make this substantial infrastructure investment. Now that we've found some good business partners to help us execute this project, I've started focusing more on politicians and bureaucrats of our city. We need the City's support to make this massive infrastructure investment in our community. The future world of communications, entertainment, social networking, business transactions, finance, travel, recreation, safety, security, and literally everything we interact with on a daily basis is or will be, transmitted, stored, and shared as digital data. It is becoming more and more critical that our residents and businesses have access to robust infrastructure that will allow them to participate and compete at an international level."

Readers are encouraged to contact their local political representatives to voice thier opinion on the importance and relavance of robust broadband services for their families and businesses.

Please contact Josh Sehn at SANE Consulting for more information.