We live in a connected age, more so than ever before, and less so than a year from now. At the time the “free wifi” idea was put into place - about six years ago - the idea was to provide a free convenience connection for casual access to email, and perhaps some light internet browser look-ups. Even back then the supply vs demand equation was dubious to provide any real level of reliable service. And, how times have changed in such a short period of time! What was maybe adequate only a few years ago is now woefully inadequate today. Not only has the demand driven by an increase in the number of devices seeking wifi (think about everyone's phone, our kids phones, iPads, etc …) increased exponentially, but also the nature of the requested service has evolved from occasional email to streaming video services in the form of uses like YouTube, TikTok, and Netflix.

The fact that the Park exists in rural Canada with very limited access to high-speed internet has become a definite barrier today. One useful metaphor is to think of internet access in our park as a water service: Think of 314 sites trying to pull water from a single garden hose. Add a second garden hose to serve the Office and you understand the problem. The entire park, from gazebo to four access points located at each washroom building share a single garden hose. For those of you that care, that’s a 16:1 service (16 Mbps down, and 1 Mbps up). A single Netflix connection may consume 5 Mbps. Compare this to my neighbour at the park that gets a “fixed wireless” service - servicing his trailer only - that is 25:3 (25 Mbps down, and 3 Mbps up). Many wired copper-based phone line services are 10:1 or maybe 15:1. Many radio-based services range from 15:1 to 25:3. Adding more garden hoses might resolve part of the problem, but they aren’t readily available in quantity from the carriers either, and some would say our area is “over sold” on capacity. Meaning even with our private services purchased outside the park’s free wifi, if everyone accesses at the same time, we all experience slow downs or less service than we expect. Also, each trailer has unequal access to the park’s wifi access points, simply based on their distance and obstructions to their nearby washroom access point.

The resultant coverage is hardly a fair system of service distribution, and hardly an adequate level of service to any given park site with anything beyond very basic needs. The bottom line is that if you rely on the internet for any remote work, or you want anything close to decent streaming for entertainment, you are buying your own internet hookup and hoping the oversold situation doesn’t hurt you too much, and you leave the existing park free wifi for others to hope to use for very occasional and light connection usages.

This may not be a permanent problem, but there is also some realism needed around timelines. None of the carriers is stringing fibre to Elim Lodge Road anytime soon, and available copper circuits and wireless services have become oversold. Internet requests aren’t letting up, nor are application types likely to use less internet in the future. The carriers simply need to add more capacity at the towers for fixed wireless solutions and/or either add more copper or ideally fibre down the roadside posts, or we need new solutions like StarLink (low orbit satellite based service) to become more generally accessible.