GORE BAY—The Town of Gore Bay will take measures to improve Internet services for boaters at the marina facilities. This comes after council had a discussion on this issue at a special meeting held earlier this month.
“It’s an upgrade to the current service,” Gore Bay Mayor Ron Lane told the Recorder after the meeting. He explained, “about three to four years ago we introduced Internet at the marina, so anyone docking at our marina would have this service. We provided this free for those people, for instance, checking their emails. For boaters that wanted to download music or movies, they would sign up with Vianet and pay for this service. But what we found is that a few people were overusing the service and using up the bandwidth, so the people with the free service were not able to get online.”
“This comes out of a discussion that came up at a public works committee meeting,” Mayor Lane told council at their meeting. “The main concern is that some clients’ Internet is not working as good as it should.” He explained he had asked town Clerk Annette Clarke to contact a consultant, Craig Timmermans, to provide a report and suggestions as to how the service can be improved.
“The costs of all this were not included in our budget this year,” Mayor Lane told council. “But, if we do as he says, it will improve the service for our customers.” Mayor Lane explained that three receivers could be added to make the Internet signal stronger and a password could be provided to all users. For users that want to use the Internet to access movies they would pay for the premier service. With the changes the town would have control over the service.
The costs for the new services improvements are $3,767 including labour and installation. “As this was not a budgeted item we have to decide if we (council) are in favour of this,” said Mayor Lane.
“We bought the equipment when originally set up the service and this new Internet system will belong to us,” said Mayor Lane. “It was found too many users were using a larger amount of bandwidth and for these users they will go onto premium service coverage.”
“Those using the basic system have quit trying because they can’t get on the Internet,” Ms. Clarke told council.
“This is a service that people expect at town marinas these days,” said Mayor Lane. By improving the services it will make boating clients happy and they will want to return to Gore Bay in the future.
Council was unanimous in agreeing to have the new improved service in place.
