Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Here’s the trifecta of Manitoba’s decrepit infrastructure: a highway with no shoulders falling apart beside hydro poles about to fall down in an area where you have zero cell coverage. And those poles look much worse in person. This is between Erickson and Sandy Lake, Manitoba. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
And I didn’t even mention mosquitoes, either
The more and more time I spend in rural Manitoba, the more I realize they are literally decades behind Saskatchewan. About three decades, to be precise.
In the fall of 2012, my mom and stepdad bought a cabin at Sandy Lake, Manitoba, population 301. It’s about 20 minutes this side of Clear Lake and Riding Mountain National Park.
And for the 14 years hence, I have not been able to make a phone call on the Main Street of that community, which apparently swells to well over 1,000 people during the summer months.
And when we go to the nearby larger community of Erikson, about 20 minutes to the east of Sandy Lake and south of the park, there, too, I cannot make a phone call from the Main Street. I tried to text a photo to my wife and was not able to do even that.
This is a community of 474 (2021 census) that has an elementary school, high school, old folks home, pharmacy, building centre, grocery store, several restaurants and more.
This condition has not improved in the nearly 14 years since we started frequenting the area. To make a call, I had to prop the phone at a certain angle on the cupboard door handle, or stand on a very specific spot on the deck. Then, maybe, just maybe, I could get a call out.
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Thankfully, WestMan Communications put in fibre two years ago, and now we can make use of wi-fi calling at our own cabin, at least.
I frequently wonder why anyone in southwest Manitoba would even pay for a cellular phone? The only places with reliable coverage are on Highways 1 and 16. No matter which highway we take from Estevan to Sandy Lake, as soon as we cross the border, it’s pretty much a dead zone to Virden, with just a pocket of coverage at Melita. And once you get off those two highways, again, dead zones. Pray you never need assistance on those roads, by which I mean almost all of them.
This past weekend I had the opportunity to talk to a farmer from around Oak River. And they have next to no coverage anywhere around there. They’ve had to put Starlinks on their major farm equipment to have the data coverage needed for modern agriculture.
To put this into perspective, I can get at least two bars of coverage in pretty much any pasture or quarter of land in southeast Saskatchewan, and I have. The only times I have to tell someone I’m going to lose them is when I go through the Qu’Appelle valley or Scissors Creek on Highway 9, Moose Mountain Creek near Oxbow, or another valley near Verwood. That’s it – and those dead zones only last a few minutes at most.
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When I take VIPs on my “Energy Literacy Tour,” I point out to them a cellular tower south of Torquay, two miles from the US border. There are no towns nearby, but lots of oilfield. And there’s that tower – making sure the whole area has coverage. And it’s not a small one, either. You can see it here on Google Maps.
SaskTel has embarked on ensuring cellular service in every community with 130 or so people or more. There’s a tower in Stenen, if you can believe it, although Hyas, where my Dad’s house is, doesn’t qualify at that threshold with only 70 people. Even so, since they put in 5G at Stenen, I can at least now make a call from his place and actually have usable data.
Take a look at the most recent round of 5G expansions from SaskTel. On that list is Milden, Sask., population 163. So is Fosston, population 40.
Manitoba? Its coverage is worse than rural Saskatchewan in the mid-1990s, when I first got my initial flip phone. And it has not improved.
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Finally, finally, the people of southwest Manitoba have started to make a stink about the horrible cellular coverage in rural areas. A few days ago I saw on Facebook that the people of St. Lazare are making serious noise about being bereft of cellular coverage. They had major flooding and couldn’t even call for help. CBC ran this story:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/st-lazare-flooding-lacking-cell-service-9.7265067
An excerpt:
But what has been even more frustrating is the longstanding issue of a lack of cell service in the community, says Devon Gurniak, a local councillor and business owner.
“This is the only town in North America where you can graduate from kindergarten to Grade 12 school and not make a phone call, which is unbelievable,” said Gurniak.
According to a letter from Reeve Barry Lowes to Bell MTS management in April, the RM gave permission to Bell MTS to install its equipment on existing towers within the community in December of 2023.
Since then, the RM says there has been “complete silence,” and it has not received any updates or additional information about its proposal.
According to the RM, it has spoken about the issue with other telecom providers.
Gurniak says the RM would be willing to pay for the necessary equipment if it meant getting reliable service.
“We were given a rough … cost of the equipment at $30,000, which the RM is willing to write a cheque for tomorrow,” said Gurniak. “But they will not put it up, and we fall on deaf ears every time.”
Jessop took to social media on Tuesday to air his frustrations with Bell MTS, writing the company has “failed us beyond comprehension.”
“These floodwaters are an absolute nightmare to navigate without cell service,” Jessop posted on Facebook.”
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Apparently, since that story ran, Bell issued this press release (excerpted):
MONTREAL, July 15, 2026 — Bell Canada (TSX: BCE, NYSE: BCE) today announced the completion of construction of its first sovereign direct-to-device satellite ground station, located in Québec, marking another major milestone toward keeping all Canadians connected. Testing has begun at the facility, which connects with AST SpaceMobile’s growing constellation of satellites. Once operational, the site will form part of the Canadian infrastructure supporting direct-to-device satellite service, enabling the integration of AST SpaceMobile’s space-based cellular broadband network with Bell’s terrestrial network. As a result, Bell customers will be able to stay connected on standard smartphones in areas beyond the reach of traditional wireless networks.
Bell successfully completed integration testing, including text messaging, broadband data connectivity, voice call and video call tests on standard smartphones through its satellite ground station, with plans to validate video streaming, IoT and public alerts in the coming weeks.
Building on Bell and AST SpaceMobile’s successful demonstrations announced last summer, these tests mark the transition from trial activities to permanent network infrastructure and are an important step toward bringing direct-to-device satellite service to market.
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Well, that’s great. Ignore putting in towers for decades, and expect satellite service to replace it. How well will this work inside buildings? Will it work at all? I’m not expecting much.
But it’s more than crappy cellular coverage, which the Manitoba oilpatch has had to deal with forever. It’s the highways, nearly all of which are falling to pieces except for a few stretches of, again, Highways 1, 16, and 10 (to the national park, so rich people from Winnipeg have a smoother journey, clearly).
And it’s even the hydro poles. There’s several places I’ve seen, notably near Melita and Erickson, where any idiot with two eyes can see whole strings of power poles standing at 15 to 20 degrees off vertical. It’s just going to take one little ice storm, or another strong wind, and the whole area is going to be down for the count. Does no one from Manitoba Hydro drive these same, decrepit highways (you know, the ones with no shoulders)? Do they not see those poles? Or is it because they can’t call it in (both sites are cellular dead zones) that no one is going to apply an ounce of prevention instead of a pound of -40 C cure?
I just can’t get over the neglect rural Manitoba receives, from its government (highways), Crown corporation (Manitoba Hydro) or key communications provider (Bell MTS, a former Crown). And in recent years, both the Conservatives and NDP have been in power – so both are to blame.
This is very much what rural Saskatchewan looked like in the 1990s. We’ve come a long way, baby. At least most Saskatchewan highways now are in respectable shape, and you can make a call almost anywhere.
The world does indeed exist outside of the Winnipeg Perimeter. Maybe some senior people within that perimeter need to open their eyes and see it.
Either that or take a drive in the country, and get a flat tire while they’re at it. Good luck calling for a tow truck.
Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@pipelineonline.ca (when he’s in Saskatchewan, at least.)
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