Internet as essential as water and sewage pipes: York Region summit panelist

YorkRegion.com
Nov. 20, 2015
Lisa Queen

Municipal leaders wouldn’t dream of allowing new homes or buildings to be constructed without water and sewage pipes.

It’s time they started thinking about high quality Internet the same way, according to a panel member at York Region’s Broadband and Innovation Summit.

“The bigger picture is broadband or Internet infrastructure in York Region is not sufficient,” Sean Stevens, CEO of Newmarket’s Treefrog Inc. website development company said following the summit at Richmond Hill’s Sheraton Parkway hotel.

Like other infrastructure, York and other Canadian communities must insist high quality Internet be included in new buildings if they want to be economically competitive, he said.

“It’s ridiculous. Why is it not part of the municipal procedure and bylaws to put high quality Internet into every new building? It’s a very limited mindset for them to build new buildings and they are obligated to put electricity in, they are obligated to put sewage in, they are obligated to put water in and they are not obligated to put Internet in?” he said.

“It’s not just that Canada is falling behind the rest of the world, which we are, but if you’re looking at the problem, if we genuinely want to be competitive as an economy, if we want to move forward, we have to have everybody on the same page and we have to start making Internet a must, a utility as opposed to making it a luxury. We have to prepare for the storm. We can’t just put in mediocre Internet. We have to put in economically competitive Internet.”

Stevens praised the region for holding the Oct. 30 conference.

“The fact that the region is putting on a summit is an indication that we are a leader in the world. We’re having the conversation,” he said.

“The fact that they got that many important people into a room to have a conversation is the greatest single indicator that we’re on track to at least change. And the region is really awake. I would say that’s another great reason to live in York Region,”

The purpose of the summit, which brought together industry leaders and municipal partners, was to highlight the region as a leader in mobilizing efforts to bring greater broadband connectivity to business and residential communities, Jonathan Wheatle, the region’s manager of strategic economic initiatives, said.

“York Region is in a great place. We have significant connectivity across the region,” he said.

“In fact, there are certain communities where we’ve had an influx of data centres and these data centres will not go to communities that don’t have significant broadband coverage.”

The summit showed the region “is a place where the sparks of innovation are abundant and alive,” Newmarket Mayor Tony Van Bynen, chair of the region’s broadband task force, said.

“Our goal is to establish York Region as a connectivity leader because connectivity enables us to work together more productively,” he said.

“Our role is to help facilitate investments in broadband infrastructure and service offerings that make broadband more accessible for businesses, institutions and residents across York Region.”

A significant achievement in the region so far has been the 10-gigabit optical fibre link between Southlake Regional Health Centre and York University, which was developed through a partnership with the hospital, the university, the town and the Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION).

The point-of-presence is credited as the first of its kind for all the players involved and provides increased capacity for research in the region.

The summit’s keynote speaker was Pat Horgan, vice-president of manufacturing, development and operations at IBM Canada in Markham.

Broadband provides an opportunity to analyze data, see patterns in the future and allow different ideas to come together to find solutions, he said.

“The opportunity that has presented itself with being connected to high-speed networks across the region and across the province and Canada gives you access to do really big things from a small place. You can do really powerful things in health care, education, safety, small business,” he said.

“We’re absolutely at a tipping point. We’re at a point where the data proliferation is big, the opportunities are big. You have to be able to think how to solve a problem with all this information coming at you from all these different sources. You’re really just problem solving, but now with way more tools in your tool kit.”

Van Bynen agreed.

“This is all about the way things are changing and not looking back, but looking forward as to what is possible so people can capture possibilities that are out there in the future,” he said.

“We’re not at a crossroads, we’re actually at multiple forks in the road. We’ve got access to so much data now that instead of left or right or forward, we have multiple choices. So, the real challenge here is a number of people will take different paths and that’s great because then everything moves forward in different directions on different fronts.”