(Quebec) Faced with “the insufficiency of cellular coverage in Quebec”, which “constitutes a security issue and a brake on development”, the government has just launched a call for tenders to identify areas with poor coverage and calculate what it would cost to connect them.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
The study is ambitious, since it will notably quantify the cost of setting up a huge telephone network, which would cover the whole of inhabited Quebec, up to the forest roads.
This news was very well received at the Quebec Federation of Municipalities. The president of the Union of Quebec Municipalities was not able to react on Friday, since he was in Gaspésie… in a place without a network.
The issue of poor cellular coverage in the regions has made headlines in recent months. In September, a police alert concerning an armed suspect in Saint-Elzéar, in the MRC of Bonaventure, was received in almost the entire province, but not in the small Gaspé municipality, due to a lack of network.
In May, a woman who was the victim of an accident on Route 138, 70 km east of Sept-Îles, found herself unable to call for help because she was in a “cell desert”.
The government itself sees shortcomings.
Quality cellular coverage is required to contact first responders in an emergency and to receive urgent government messages.
The Ministry of Executive Council in the call for tenders published on October 5
The successful bidder will therefore have to precisely map the cellular coverage in Quebec and list each of the towers. The map is to be completed in June 2023, the tender provides.
Then, by October 2023, the tenderer must have studied three more or less ambitious scenarios:
- A maximalist scenario, with coverage of “any inhabited place”, any numbered road, public road or forest road, as well as the St. Lawrence River, the Saguenay River and Lake Saint-Jean
- An intermediate scenario, with coverage of “any permanently inhabited place” – which excludes cottages and resort areas – two- or three-digit numbered roads with the exception of forest roads, as well as the St. Lawrence River
- A minimalist scenario, with coverage of any permanently inhabited location south of 51e parallel (just south of the Manicouagan Reservoir) and two- or three-digit numbered roads with the exception of logging roads.
The tenderer must finally produce an economic impact study, then a scenario will be selected. The document does not specify who, telephone companies or the state, will pay for the provision of this additional coverage.
One thing is certain, the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) had promised during the election campaign to “complete cellular coverage”.
The digital divide “is no longer acceptable”
The president of the Quebec Federation of Municipalities (FQM), Jacques Demers, is delighted that this file is moving forward. The FQM has been asking for better cellular coverage for years.
“For us, the important thing is that we no longer talk about it in the next elections. The internet is more or less settled, the contracts are given. There is still the cell phone, ”says Mr. Demers, who had to go to a very specific place in his house in Sainte-Catherine-de-Hatley to successfully connect to the network.
For him, it is a matter of public safety. “It was quite incredible, the case of Saint-Elzéar-de-Bonaventure. The people of the place did not receive the alert. The mayor couldn’t believe it,” he said.
The mayor of Sept-Îles hopes that Route 138 will be completely covered. “We only have one access road, the 138. If there is a winding road, it is this one, with the heavy trucks circulating… It is dangerous, he says. Whether it’s a flat tire, an accident… Motorists who end up in the ditch and can’t call for help, it happens here. »
The Minister of the Executive Council itself recognizes in its call for tenders that “the digital divide is no longer considered acceptable in Quebec and [que] the ubiquity of digital services has become a necessity”.
The government notes that the three major Canadian cellular operators “have about the same number of cell sites as the Finnish operators, although they serve 6 times fewer subscribers in a territory 30 times smaller”.