The Mayor for Ritchot says they are one step closer to offering high speed and fibre optic Internet to ratepayers.

Ritchot is one of 13 municipalities that makes up the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region (WMR). Other municipalities include Tache and Niverville. On Thursday morning, a Memorandum Of Understanding was signed by JohnQ Public Inc and two local and national Internet service providers. JohnQ Public Inc is the WMR's economic development corporation. The two providers are WireIE and RFNOW Inc, based in Virden.

(Chris Kennedy from RFNOW at Thursday's signing.)Ritchot Mayor Chris Ewen says they have decent Internet service in their major centres, including Ile des Chenes and St. Adolphe. But, he says residents living in Howden and Ste. Agathe have low download speeds. He notes this makes it difficult to get work done and connect with families.

"Which is unfortunate that we are so close to the city but yet we can't get the service providers," he says.

Macdonald Reeve Brad Erb is Chair of the JohnQ board. He says bringing the right partners to the table is the critical next step to building a cost-effective, sustainable and competitive broadband network that will allow the region to attract good companies and good jobs while also servicing the needs of residents.

The next steps in the process are to finalize the business model, complete design of the network and negotiate with other stakeholders. After that, they will develop and recommend the final broadband service offering for end users and develop and recommend an open access model for third-party ISPs to promote competition.

Ewen says there is no timeline by when these next steps might be completed.

Through JohnQ, the development of high-speed Internet infrastructure is being explored for 43 under-serviced communities in the 13 municipalities that make up the metro region. Many are shovel-ready, which means construction could commence as early as mid-May, 2019.

"There's always going to be a cost to anything we do," says Ewen. "But with partners like this they are going to help us find that funding that we need, the grant applications will be a lot easier to go through and we'll be able to hopefully team up with the province and the federal government in getting Internet everywhere."