Development of the Digital Economy in Support of Higher Education and Research

Summary

BCNET supports the joint submission to the Digital Economy Consultation by the Canadian Digital Media Network, Canadian Research Knowledge Network, Canadian University Council of CIOs, CANARIE and Compute Canada. An integrated strategy, vision and plan is required so that all regions of the country, including B.C., benefit.

BCNET, in this submission, is addressing the Digital Infrastructure theme, calling for improved national infrastructure for ICT. In particular, BCNET is suggesting the following:

• Improve access to broadband networks
• Improve access to digital content
• Ensure existence of world–class shared IT infrastructure
• Improve access to collaboration technologies

BCNET, as a consortium of higher education and research institutions within the Province of British Columbia, is supportive of Industry Canada's Consultation on the Digital Economy, and believes that support for an integrated digital environment and improved national ICT infrastructure are of paramount importance.

Submission

Support for an Integrated Digital Environment

BCNET emphatically supports the joint submission, Canada's Digital Environment for Research, Innovation and Education, by the following five organizations:

• Canadian Digital Media Network (CDMN)
• Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN)
• Canadian University Council of CIOs (CUCCIO)
• CANARIE Inc.
• Compute Canada

BCNET agrees that it is important for the nation to develop "a strategy for an integrated digital environment, together with a vision of how the various elements, and the organizations that provide them, must align." Such a strategy will have multiple downstream benefits for all regions of the country, and especially for British Columbia. The province's growing technology cluster of biotechnology, digital media, advanced wireless, and ICT, can only be helped by such a coherent strategy.

Any strategy developed, as the organizations above note, should include the following:

• Development of a vision, management and operational strategy;
• Adoption of an integrated approach to planning and funding;
• Creation of new coordination mechanisms;
• Creation of new approaches for managing sustainability;
• A mechanism to ensure global coordination of activity; and
• Elimination of institutional, regional and disciplinary disparities.

Improved National Infrastructure for ICT

BCNET, as an advanced ICT consortium for research and higher education in B.C., also believes that there are issues that there are specific issues that need to be addressed for the ICT sector to grow. The growth of this sector to world–class would provide the necessary underpinnings for next generation research and development in our member institutions.

• Improve access to broadband networks

BCNET believes ubiquitous broadband to be an important national objective that has implications for research productivity, scientific discovery, and educating students.

Reasonably priced high–speed networks are very important for scientific inquiry. Instruments for scientific research are increasingly located in forests, oceans, mountains, and rivers. Sensors and video cameras are the basis for observations that can lead to important discoveries. These instruments will require broadband networks to ship data back to compute and storage clusters for analysis.

Unfortunately, those networks cover a rather small national footprint. Whenever a new scientific facility is proposed, one of the first questions is connectivity to high speed research networks. As these facilities become more distributed, with far flung sensor networks located in diverse settings, access to ubiquitous broadband is a necessity.

Teaching and learning increasingly requires new networks. Students working at home will require high quality digital instructional media, similar to what is available on campus. For optimal learning, students will need improved network access. Instructors need ways to provide rich digital media, simulations, and scientific data sets to students for their multi–faceted education. Blackboards are no longer sufficient, or even necessary.

Our research–intensive universities in B.C. are home to over 100,000 students. All of these students have access to near universal high–speed wireless on campus, as well as 100Mbps connectivity in dormitories. These students are the future users of high speed networks in their communities and workplaces, and will not be content with the current 5Mbps or less networks of today.

How best to improve access? BCNET believes that open access fibre and wireless networks are essential. Open access networks allow many service providers to share cabling infrastructure in order to deliver services to homes, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and other locations within a community.

• Improve access to digital content

Following from the need for highly interconnected open access networks, Canadian content will increasingly need to be distributed over this infrastructure.

Will media programs, including Canadian content, be distributed via international companies such as Google, Amazon, and Akamai, or will there be competitive Canadian content distribution networks? Such networks need to be developed within the country, and tightly tied into open access broadband networks. With network neutrality policies firmly developed, any content provider and distribution network will be able to stream media to all homes and workplaces.

But the infrastructure for situating content servers is largely ad hoc and unplanned. A strategy, vision, and plan for delivering content from a large number of competitive providers is needed. The old methods using cable TV will soon no longer suffice in a world of YouTube, Facebook, and the like. Where are the Canadian equivalents?

• Ensure there is world–class shared IT infrastructure within Canada

Increasingly computing and data storage will be done at a site away from home, business, or school. In Canada, where will these sites be located? How many will be needed? In what ways can they be deployed?

It is a foregone conclusion that the services and infrastructure will be needed. The only question is whether it will be found within Canada or not.

• Improve access to collaboration technologies

The world is rapidly moving away from the plain–old telephone as the main method for collaboration. The next generation will use a wide range of digital tools to communicate, including voice, video, web pages, texting, etc. Ensuring that all regions have access to these technologies will only serve to improve education and research across the country, and will also create.

About BCNET

BCNET operates and develops high–speed optical networks, often called advanced networks, for British Columbia's higher education and research institutes.

Also known as the Optical Regional Advanced Network (ORAN), the dedicated bandwidth facilitates leading–edge research, big science projects and distance learning across the province and around the world.

Advanced networks are independent from the commercial Internet and enables world–class projects in the realms of education, health, physics, the arts and science. The network allows researchers to collaborate and share massive volumes of data that can open new discoveries.

In British Columbia, nearly 140 research and higher education organizations use the BCNET network.

Our Vision

B.C.'s research and higher education institutions will achieve its strategic objectives enabled by the contributions of BCNET.

Our Mission

BCNET offers cost–effective shared solutions that place its members at the forefront of information and communication technology innovation.

For more information, see BCNET