There are two main telecommunications companies with Province- wide networks that can provide connections to the Internet. Telus is based in Vancouver and Shaw is based in Calgary.

There are over 80 companies that deliver regional systems to connect to the Internet in British Columbia.

The Canadian Government have an online search tool available at National Broadband Internet Service Availability Map.

Some municipalities and village councils have also assumed that responsibility due to a lack of private investment or interest in delivering connectivity services in their jurisdiction.

In rural areas, many communications dealers represent Telus, either as independent dealers or as agents. The roots of this arrangement lie in the history of the introduction of cellular phone services across the Province with local regional dealers selling product to consumers while BC Tel maintained their traditional product lines – telephone landlines and business data lines. Telus then centralized the sales and delivery of services as the Internet became the service backbone for all service and are now re-introducing local service support using local dealers, phasing out regional Telus offices.

Shaw’s background is in delivering a coaxial cable- based TV system to all areas of the Province that made economic sense. The introduction of Internet technologies in the 1990’s was the stimulus for the Canadian Cable TV systems to add those services, followed by IP telephone service. Now cell services are being added in urban areas. These now all ride on the same fibre IP (Internet Protocol) backbone network at higher speeds, replacing the original coaxial cable system. Shaw also expanded their network of dealerships as their range of products has increased.

While Shaw has added services to TV, Telus has been transitioning from DSL (Digital Subscriber Line, a telephony heritage technology) to a fibre- based IP network, successfully adding TV service and Internet data services to their product lines.

The telephone must work well and reliably at all times as it is the main access to Emergency Services covering the community and remains one of the main direct communications channels for a public library to their patrons. As little as 10 years ago, this meant that Telus(formerly BC Tel - except in Prince Rupert) would deliver telephone service on copper cable to a branch telephone switch in your location or directly to the desks.

This is another area of connectivity change driven by the adoption of Internet technology. Telephone communications and branch telephone systems are now mostly sold using Voice- over –IP (VOIP) technology that provides telephone service over the Internet connection. Your telephone numbers need not change, so service to the patrons and community remain the same through the transition. VOIP switches can be installed onsite to replace the older digital system or service can be delivered remotely from almost anywhere in the world.

VOIP systems are most often sold as a low- cost monthly subscription service with long distance calls that are much cheaper than on traditional landlines. The cost saving in telephone service that VOIP offers represents a budget opportunity to investigate improvement of the Internet Service speeds for the branch location. If your Internet connection is low in capacity, variable in quality or just unreliable, this may not be the correct choice for your Library. A VOIP system may display quality issues in call establishment or call quality when the quality and speed of the Internet service is low..

Another area to look at is the age of your LAN infrastructure, which may be too old to handle the requirements of VOIP. If you have any reservations about the reliability or capacity of your Internet service, the current recommendation is still to maintain one real landline telephone and a physical telephone instrument on branch library premises, specifically for access to emergency service access. Since the purpose is local, you should limit calls for long distance and international destinations.

If you need to order a real landline phone from Telus, be aware that this is not a service they encourage. You may experience some reluctance to comply. Telus is in the process of decommissioning the technology platforms and regional offices that deliver landline telephone services in favour of Internet based VOIP phone service servers located in central data centres rather than distributed (local) offices.