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Internet problems continue to plague rural residents

There’s nothing more frustrating than being connected to the Internet and having it cut out intermittently.

There’s nothing more frustrating than being connected to the Internet and having it cut out intermittently.

Ponoka County residents have been able to take advantage of some of these services because of upgrades in technology but issues can still arise.

Lorelei Swanson, who lives about six kilometres west of Rimbey, has had an issue with her connection since December. She has had intermittent connectivity and has been unable to get a solid answer from her Internet service provider (ISP), Platinum Communications.

Swanson was unable to get a connection just before Christmas and thought the problem was related to her wireless router. She bought a new one but still had trouble keeping a connection, which is when she called Platinum.

The customer representatives were the first stage of help for her who believed there was no issue but Swanson disagreed as she still could not connect. It took demanding to speak to the next level of technical care before Platinum representatives saw a problem.

She wanted to speak with a manager who was away on vacation and no call came after several weeks.

It took a letter to the company before a phone call was made to Swanson explaining the issue was hardware related and was being fixed, however the Internet connection continued to drop.

“Sunday was out for two hours,” she said. “Sometimes it won’t even load up the weather page.”

So she called customer service again Feb. 22, which did not have any record of her problems. She was angry enough to hang up but to Platinum’s credit, Swanson was called back by the same service person who confirmed the Rimbey tower was having some hardware issues. “The guy who called me back, I thanked him.”

Swanson was relieved with the customer service she received and believes talking about the issue helped reduce her frustration but there has been no effort from the company to send someone to her residence to find the issue, she stated.

Platinum CEO Bernard Parkinson is surprised people have Internet connection issues. His company purchased Alberta High Speed last summer. Swanson feels service was faster with the former company.

Parkinson has not made any changes to Alberta High Speed’s service. “What’s happening is we’re investing a significant amount of money. We have guys out there right now who are putting up new gear and we’ve added more broadband to the overall network to actually increase the service.”

He does not know why customers are having Internet connection issues. There can be problems if a person’s home is not within the line of site of a tower; leaves in the springtime or objects in the way are a possibility.

The company uses two kinds of frequencies to provide users with a connection, licensed and unlicensed.

The former can be used only by the company that purchases that licence but is difficult to acquire and expensive, he explained. Platinum uses more unlicensed frequencies as it is easier and cheaper to acquire. “We have unlimited usage, you can use as much as you want.”

The biggest challenge with rural Internet is a consistent power supply; a power pole might be damaged or a brownout could occur.

“We spend 90 per cent of our time fixing and repairing,” he stated.

Heavy usage will slow down the network though and that can happen in cities such as Calgary and Edmonton during peak times. “It’s just the laws of physics.”

Parkinson used a water pipe as an example and only a certain amount of product can go through the pipe. Whether using copper, fiber optic cables or the radio spectrum there will still be congestion at certain times.

Some companies will throttle users’ bandwidth to regulate network traffic but Platinum does not throttle use, he added. They also allow unlimited use.

Swanson has since been able to get in touch with the same customer service representative who called before and an employee was scheduled to offer a hardware upgrade for her to try.