The mission of this Canadian organization is to facilitate the creation of a sustainable ultra high speed fibre to the home or fibre-to-the-premise (FTTH or FTTP) broadband network for South Eastern Alberta including Medicine Hat and surrounding communities as well as other Alberta towns and cities. Fibre can help future proof our communities networking requirements, enabling it to compete on a level playing field, and delivering the social benefits that similar networks have been shown to deliver elsewhere.

We hope to establish a membership which includes Canadian municipalities, utilities, developers, traditional and non-traditional service providers. We are working to create a cohesive group to share knowledge and build industry consensus on key issues surrounding broadband and fiber-to-the-home.

Thus far we are providing education promoting and accelerating the deployment of next generation broadband-to-the-home. The resulting quality of life enhancements are substantial.

The objectives of this group are to:

The benefits of municipal broadband projects are substantial and many. They include:

• Attracting new families of "knowledge workers" and telecommuters to the community
• Getting away from the cities and traffic to enjoy a healthier lifestyle
• Attracting high tech businesses requiring large bandwidth such as call centres, software developers and engineering companies
• Stimulating economic development
• Boosting quality of life within the community
• Delivering comprehensive, cost-effective communication to minimize isolation
• Providing technical jobs, so young adults are not forced to leave the community to pursue career opportunities
• Stimulating the economy for new, local, home-based business start-ups that operate over the Internet

These benefits can be a powerful justification for municipalities.  Municipalities around the world have recognised that the future welfare of their citizens would be hugely constrained by the lack of high speed connectivity and that, left to their own devices, incumbent network providers are unlikely to provide it. In North America there are at least 41 successful operational municipal fibre networks and in Europe more than 130. They have reasoned that provision of this critical infrastructure is as worthy of municipal involvement as roads, water, electricity and other utilities.

Providers need the support of municipalities to reduce the administrative burden of permitting, providing access to right of ways and implement building codes that can create a positive influence on telecommunication services within their jurisdiction. These actions can help citizens gain access to robust, affordable, truly high-speed broadband access.

Some of the existing big telecommunication corporations have not demonstrated a willingness to put community needs before profit. The traditional network providers have little incentive to undertake such a project as their best interests are served by maintaining their vertically integrated business models and deriving as much return on their sunk investments as possible. In the meantime consumers will miss out on the benefits made possible by fibre optic networks.