A company owned by Bluewater Power is exploring expanding into residential broadband service, beginning in Point Edward
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Bluewater Regional Networks is currently surveying the 2,000 residents of the village to gauge interest in an alternative to existing broadband providers.
The online survey can be found at https://bregional.com/front-page/vpe-survey/.
Bluewater Regional Networks grew out of struggles Bluewater Power was having in about 2014 with its own broadband “connectivity,” said Chris Gould, head of broadband provider owned by the local utility.
Bluewater Power began looking at building its own fiber service for its own locations and the plan expanded after the utility found there was interest from other potential users, such as the hospital and college.
“It turned out that others were not terribly happy with the choices and selection they had,” said Gould.
“We’re a poles and wires company at our core so what we do well is manage infrastructure like that,” he said. “So we started to build in the commercial corridors for some of our own purposes and the other customers that were interested.”
With its background in electricity distribution, the company can offer broadband customers reliability and quick response to service issues, Gould said.
Its initial customers include small and medium non-residential users, as well as large industries, and the original business case call for building a 25-km fiber system.
It began servicing its first customer in 2016 and “it’s now turned into a 70ish kilometer backbone around the commercial and industrial areas in the city,” Gould said.
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Gould said the company’s initial plan was to build that “backbone” of fiber through the community and then develop a residential service, including arranging to offer TV and phone service along with broadband.
“We have these in our tool belt and now we’re in the process of trying to determine whether or not there is a need for it in the market” and “a desire for it,” he said.
The village, which is one of the municipal owners of Bluewater Power, “has been an absolutely great partner,” Gould said.
“We’ve got quite an extensive backbone down there,” including commercial customers and the village’s buildings and facilities, which makes it “a logical place to start” offering residential service, he said.
Point Edward has been encouraging village residents to take part in the survey by posting a link to it on social media and sending it out to those on its e-mail list.
“We’ve had a few concerns raised about quality of internet service in the village,” said Jim Burns, Point Edward’s CAO. “We get a few complaints about what’s available.”
Bluewater Regional Networks is carrying out the survey and will be responsible for the cost of building a residential service, should it go ahead in the village, Burns said.
If government grants were available for a project, the village could partner with the company to submit an application, Burns said.
It’s a good partnership for the village and an opportunity to “promote a local company and one we’re a part owner of,” he said.
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Bluewater Power was created in 2000 when six Lambton County municipal electricity utilities merged as part of a provincial restructuring of the industry. It’s owners, along with Point Edward, are Sarnia, Petrolia, Brooke-Alvinston, Warwick Township and Oil Springs.
The local electricity distributor began diversifying a decade ago and now owns a group of companies, along with Bluewater Regional Neworks, that account for 50 per cent of its business.
“The world was forced to digitally transform a couple of years ago with the pandemic,” Gould said.
Because of that, village residents “are asking for improved options” and the company is now trying to determine “if there is a market for us to do that,” he said.
“It’s not cheap to build fiber to the home and we have a very critical and business-minded board,” Gould said.
The cost of building residential systems is “in the millions of dollars,” he said.
“We have to prove that not only the economics work,” but also that the potential is there to penetrate the market, Gould said.
A “premium product” that is “competitively priced” will be needed to accomplish that, he said.
Response from village residents “has been really good, so far,” and “we’re hopeful to make decisions this year,” Gould said.