Digital Equity + Advocacy

NCF believes that everyone has a right to affordable, reliable and secure internet services that they can understand how to use, while feeling safe online. We are also committed to advancing digital equity in our community.

This work includes:

• selling affordable home and business internet with speeds up to 1500Mbps using wholesale access to last mile incumbent networks on DSL, cable and fibre
• our Community Access Fund, a lower-cost internet plan for Ottawa Community Housing tenants
• offering one-on-one digital support from our award-winning HelpDesk of staff and trained community volunteers
• offering free locally-hosted email
• running digital skills workshops and sharing digital resources
• advocating for fairer laws and regulations to the government, CRTC, and other relevant agencies
• other public engagement around digital equity, including co-founding the first Digital Access Day in 2018 and co-founding Digital Equity Ottawa in 2020

In late 2024 in a return to NCF's roots as a community network, NCF launched our CommuniFi pilot project, building a free-to-use WiFi network in Vanier-Overbrook to help connect those living on low incomes.

CommuniFi was made possible by funding support from the Net Good program at CIRA (the Canadian Internet Registration Authority) and in partnership with Ottawa Community Housing and Hiboo Networks, a subsidiary of Hydro Ottawa. Check out a video about the project:

For more about digital equity, visit NCF's time capsule for thirty video perspectives on digital equity, created in 2022 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of NCF's founding. We'll be releasing the stored predictions every five years! Participants included a range of digital equity experts, including Cory Doctorow:

Here are some of our recent submissions to the CRTC and government:

2025:

Dec. 3/25: Submitted comments on CRTC 2025-226 – Development of a regulatory policy on measures to improve the resiliency of telecommunications networks and the reliability of telecommunications services

2024:

June 5/24: Helped 307net draft their submission to the 2023-89 review of the Broadband Fund

Feb 12/24: Presentation to the CRTC's 2023-56 hearing on the Review of the Wholesale High-Speed Access Service Framework

2023:

• Nov 20/23: Submitted a reply to CRTC 2023-56 interventions and requested to appear at the public hearing in February
• Oct 16/23: Submitted a third intervention to CRTC 2023-56 - Review of the wholesale high-speed access service framework
• July 20/23: Submitted an intervention to Telecom Notice of Consultation CRTC 2023-89 on the Broadband Fund policy review.
• June 22/23: Submitted a second intervention to CRTC 2023-56 - Review of the wholesale high-speed access service framework.
• June 15/23: Presented NCF's digital equity work at Synapcity session which included presentations from the Social Planning Council of Ottawa and Connected Canadians.
• June 6/23: Submitted a reply to interventions on temporary aggregated access to FTTP as part of CRTC 2023-56
• April 24/23: Submitted comments on temporary aggregated access to Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) facilities to the first stage of the CRTC 2023-56 hearing

2022:

• July 19/22: Comments on the Order Issuing a Direction to the CRTC on a Renewed Approach to Telecommunications Policy

2021:

• August 25/21: Petition to the Governor in Council concerning Requests to review and vary Telecom Order 2019-288 regarding final rates for aggregated whole high-speed access services, Telecom Decision CRTC 2021-181
  
• March 16/21: Participated as a moderator for "the Human Cost of the Affordability Problem" session during the Day of Action for Affordable Internet

As part of this work, we co-founded Digital Equity Ottawa with the Social Planning Council of Ottawa to help address the need for affordable internet, connected devices, digital literacy, and digital capacity across the community sector, especially in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to United Way East Ontario for the funding to make this happen. Watch NCF staffer Andrew Martey-Asare talk more about the project:

We can't achieve digital equity on our own. That’s why since the beginning we have worked with community partners — like Ottawa Public Library, Ottawa Community Housing, the Internet Society, CompuCorps Mentoring, the low-income rights group ACORN, the Ottawa PC Users’ Group, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, the Pinecrest-Queensway Employment Services and many more — to provide context and get the word out.

It's why we founded Digital Access Day in 2018 with support from CIRA and in partnership with CompuCorps, a tech charity, and the Canadian Internet Society.

It’s why we pushed for the Internet to be considered a basic service at the CRTC in 2015 and marched for net neutrality on Parliament Hill in 2007.

We’re a small team, but we’re proud of what we have done so far. However the stakes are only getting higher and we plan to do more, with the power and passion of our members coming together with the wider community.

To get involved with our advocacy work, please email our Executive Director at execdir@ncf.ca.

To donate to our advocacy work: www.ncf.ca/donate

Listen to audio from the 2018 Digital Access Day of Ken Sanderson, former Executive Director of Broadband Communications North, a not-for-profit ISP serving Indigenous communities in Northern Manitoba: