If you have internet problems, this is your time to speak up.
Lambton County is part of the South West Internet Fibre Technology (SWIFT) project. The federal and provincial governments have committed $180 million to improve internet in southwestern Ontario. Local governments, like Lambton, are also committing money to provide fibre optic technology. But first, they have to know where it is needed.
Robert Wilks, manager of information technology, says SWIFT is conducting a survey to find out where the money will be best invested.
Wilks says both homeowners and businesses have a hard time getting a good connection. St. Clair, Dawn-Euphemia and Enniskillen Townships have all worked with private providers to try to improve service in their areas.
But he says there are still areas where using the Internet is a problem.
“Most areas are partially provided with a wireless service,” says Wilks. “But that is only good if you don’t have trees.”
The hope is the SWIFT project will address those problems but first they need to know the specifics of what people have now including the speed of the connection and what you want to be able to use the service for. It is taking a survey – online – until Aug. 1, according to Wilks.
“We want every single family, every single business and every single farmer to fill out the survey,” he says adding the more data that comes from Lambton, the more likely the problem will be addressed in the first round of projects. “We want to make some noise.”
And Wilks says the information gathered from the survey could help the community down the road.
“How you use it could become important in the future,” he says adding if grants become available in the agriculture area and SWIFT can show problems with connectivity in Lambton’s agriculture community, funding may be available.
The survey is being done online at http://www.swiftnetwork.ca/survey.
Wilks is not sure why the survey about connectivity problems is being done only online, however county officials suggest people without service can go to the local public library to fill out the document.