If the world doesn’t end on Dec 21, as interpreted from the Mayan calendar, the Town of Englee will have faster Internet in the New Year.
The town has been experiencing slow Internet speeds due to Internet congestion.
To bring about a more sensible speed, Mark Duggan, senior corporate affairs advisor with Bell Aliant, told the Northern Pen upgrades are scheduled to take place in 2013.
While facility upgrades in Englee are in the engineering stage, Duggan said, “It’s definitely on our list for the first quarter of the new year.”
Mayor Rudy Porter said something has to be tried in the way of improvements.
Porter said he’s had numerous residents vent their frustrations about the Internet services being provided.
“It’s really bad,” he said. “There’s a fixed amount of bandwidth but (all these Internet accessible devices) are piggy backing off the same amount of bandwidth and it’s slowing things down.”
Speaking from experience, Porter said, he’s had to sit down at the computer for three hours just to pay a bill.
The problem
Duggan said the town’s Internet congestion is caused by the increased demand for bandwidth.
It’s something, he said, that isn’t dissimilar from the rest of the world.
“It’s being driven by the growth of various online services and video – such as Netflix and YouTube,” he said. “Existing customers for service providers are using more bandwidth and it puts extra pressure on the network capacity for Internet.”
When it gets to the point where there’s increased usage and slower speeds, Duggan said, upgrades need to be made.
“The upgrade we’ll be doing in the New Year, will improve the speeds,” he said.
Duggan said it’s fairly significant for Bell Aliant.
“We invest millions of dollars in our network every year,” he said. “Englee, with our customer load and the work that needs to be done, it’s part of our own regular network investment that we do.”
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