The legendary Internet woes of Dawn-Euphemia could be over as early as this month.
And silos scattered across the under serviced area are the key to the plan to bring high speed internet to 90 per cent of the municipality.

The township has been selected to be part of the Rural Ontario Residential Broadband program. The province put up $63 million to help communities with poor internet find solutions to their problems.

Dawn-Euphemia’s internet access has been a constant problem. Residents either pay hundreds of dollars a month for data plans – which still don’t allow for streaming video – or have no access at all.

The problem has been magnified during the pandemic. As the province locked down, it became next to impossible for students and parents to complete their work online in the area. Local school boards compiled notebooks of work for some students in Dawn-Eupehmia because they simply didn’t have access to the internet.

Mayor Al Broad says township council couldn’t hold Zoom meetings because they didn’t have the internet to support video conferencing. Instead, they used the phone.

But a new plan by CENGN, a group that helps small Internet companies get their technologies off the ground, and MPV wifi based out of Thamesville, is about to change all that.

Broad says by October, 90 per cent of the township will have internet speeds of up to 100 megabytes.

Right now, a survey shows most residents have speeds of two or three megabytes.

Broad says the project will see one internet tower built and antennas placed on six grain elevators around the municipality to bounce signals through the usually hard to serve area. MPV specializes in using existing structures, like grain elevators, to bring internet access to rural areas.

Broad says the project is expected to cost about $800,000, with MPV footing half the bill and the rest of the money coming from the province.

“We appreciate the provincial government recognizing the need for broadband services in rural Ontario,” says Broad.

“The digital divide is real and magnified during this COVID-19 global pandemic,” said Infrastructure Minister Laurie Scott in a news release. “We are moving as fast as we can to get people the services that they need.”

Broad says MPV is aiming to have the system up and running by October. Work is already underway in Florence, where fibre optics will go in the ground and where the highest speeds can be expected.

Shetland will also benefit from the highest speeds, however the signal there will be wireless.

A series of antennas will be placed on grain elevators to give service to rural areas. Broad says that will be about 10 megabyte service – three times hirer than most people have now.

“People who are heavily surrounded by trees still could have some issues,” he says. “As much as the technology has improved, it’s not fool proof.”

Packages will range in cost from $50 to $150 per month.

CENGN’s Rick Penwarden hopes the Dawn-Euphemia project will be a solution to other small communities facing the same obstacles in the future.