Selkirk College faculty and students are now benefiting from faster Internet speeds, thanks to a connection to the fibre-optic broadband network owned and managed by the Columbia Basin Broadband Corporation (CBBC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Columbia Basin Trust.
“The ability to connect to high-speed Internet impacts many aspects of Columbia Basin residents’ lives, including education,” said Aimee Ambrosone, Director, Delivery of Benefits. “By steadily working to expand and utilize our regional broadband network, we continue to see concrete results like these that help improve the quality of life, well-being and prosperity of our region’s residents and communities.”
The Trust’s network—which has brought the College a 10-fold improvement in digital connectivity—also helps bring high-speed Internet to local governments, service providers and rural customers in the Basin.
“It’s night and day as compared to before,” said Justin Robinson, a Selkirk College graduate and instructor in the college’s School of Environment and Geomatics. “You can download a gigabyte of data per second. The Internet connection at Selkirk now is the same as you would get in downtown Vancouver.
“Before, students had to worry about file size and lag times; it was frustrating and limiting. Datasets we rely on for student projects that we had to maintain locally and constantly update are now available to us in real time. Students now have access to information that is more reliable and more readily available.”
“The Trust has invested heavily in the area to develop high-speed connections,” said Darrell Hicks, IT Manager, Strategic Projects for Selkirk College. “We were able to leverage that investment to give an organization like ours a reach we could not otherwise have. It has changed the conversation from ‘we can’t’ to ‘what do we want to do’.”
Brendan Wilson, School Chair for Environment and Geomatics, added: “Students can remain in their home communities here while pursuing their studies; they can seamlessly connect with their campus, instructor and fellow students on their mobile devices as they access distributed learning. For instructors it means we can explore new ways in which to engage with our existing students while also attracting new students to our programs. It means we can retain and grow our student numbers in the region and that benefits everyone.”
Check out this video about the benefits of broadband filmed and produced by Selkirk College Digital Arts and New Media student, Jonathan Robinson of FMRL Productions. To learn more about the Trust’s work in broadband, visit ourtrust.org/broadband.