The summer television viewing season isn’t what it used to be.
Once known for endless reruns and launches of shows that studios deemed less likely to be successful, the world of streaming entertainment and the production houses it created are churning out phenomenal content you’ve just got to see. The trouble is, lots of other people want to watch it too! And quite often, they’re streaming at the same time as you. And with kids out of school for the summer and many people heading indoors to escape the heat, internet usage increases during the dog days of summer. Unfortunately, along with the increased demand, streaming picture quality and overall reliability often decline, frequently turning what should be a relaxing evening into a frustrating experience.
So what can you do to prepare for all of this increased demand? Or maybe you’re worried about the amount of time your kids are on the screen? Or are you doomed to suffer repeated buffering, pixelation, and loading errors during the summer slowdown?
Tip #1: Upgrade to Fiber Internet
The single best thing you can do to improve your internet speed and connection is to upgrade to fiber internet. A technological wonder, fiber internet utilizes fiber-optic cables composed of ultra-thin, tiny strands of glass and other materials that transmit internet data near the speed of light.
As a result, fiber internet’s speeds exceed cable internet, which uses older technology and copper-based materials that cannot compete with fiber’s highest speeds.
Getting a dedicated fiber internet line through Northern Lights Fiber directly to your home means you no longer have to share bandwidth with your neighbors.
Since many in your community are already customers of ours, you may need to move to Tip#2.
Tip #2: Select the Bandwidth to Meet Your Family’s Needs
Once you’ve upgraded to fiber, talk to customer service at Northern Lights about which level of broadband you need. This will vary from household to household, we can help you determine what will provide the proper amount of bandwidth. If you have multiple people in your home, work from home during the summer, or want to use technology to the max (i.e. security cameras), be sure to choose a plan that offers enough bandwidth for the whole family to use it simultaneously. This tip will help keep the high-speed internet flowing into your home and devices and help keep the peace in your family!
Tip #3: Use the Northern WiFi App
Now that you have a perfect fiber internet plan for your needs, you should consider using our Northern WiFi App. This is the free App that many of you already have. In a few simple clicks, you can easily:
• Reset your password or SSID • Run bandwidth tests • Approve connected devices to use the internet • Create guest networks (so your in-laws don’t use all your internet)!
Tip #4: Sign Up for our ExperienceIQ and ProtectIQ add-ons
The ProtectIQ and ExperienceIQ functions are not only affordable, but it will give you peace of mind on how the internet is used in your home. We want to deliver the best and safest experience possible!
ProtectIQ is an anti-virus and anti-malware software that is embedded in the WiFi router. This means that every device connected to your network is protected, giving you peace of mind. With protect IQ, you’ll receive
• Malicious website protection, anti-virus and anti-ransomeware packet inspection, and intrusion detection • Monitoring that automatically blocks anything that looks suspicious coming into your home • A dashboard that demonstrates how this service is working in your home
Our ExperienceIQ add on allows you to manage screen time in your home, right down to the individual device. You can even filter out YouTube content, ensuring that individual family members watch age appropriate content Keep in mind that this is much more than limiting or even policing content your kids may use. Parental controls let you prevent your children from using online devices during certain times of day or night, which both reduce their screen time (something all parents aim to do) and increases the amount of bandwidth for you to enjoy!
Many of our Northern Lights Fiber customers have already signed up for ExperienceIQ. So if you want a tutorial on how to use it, please contact us!
By implementing these tips, you can significantly improve the picture quality and reliability of your streaming experience, even with the increased internet demand and higher usage of the summer. So sit back, relax, and enjoy a summer of streaming!
And for more helpful tips on improving your internet experience, Northern Lights Fiber’s social pages!
You’ve seen our 2021 year end review where we tracked back through several months of planning, community events and good times in each of our communities. What we’d like to do now is draw attention to Wembley Specifically, wherein we held the majority of our fun sales events, enjoying all kinds of fun enjoyment. Here’s a few of our favorite moments from last year in wembley.
Morning Coffee and Donuts
Our very first time setting up shop in Wembley, we had some fun doing door to door sales and set up a coffee and doughnuts tent to hang out and chat with our customers in the morning as they headed off to work. It was a blast, we saw lots of interest in our services and got to know so many great folks from town.
Icecream For All
The next, and the far more important event that we were privildeged to attend, was the grand opening of a brand new park in town. Hosted by the parks and recreation department – we enjoyed handing out free icecream and meeting so many families from town!
A Bit of Christmas Spirit
Our favorite event from the entire year has to be the Winter Solstice Light Up Parade. This event was such a blast and we are so thankful that a few members from our team were able to attend and witness the community spirit of Wembley at full stride. It was an incredible time for us to share with the town and a great event to spruce up the holiday spirit. As we look on to 2022, were already looking forward to more of these incredible events and shared experiences with Wembley. There’s more to come from our work in Wembley with many more connections to be made, both in terms of internet and with so many of you who we have yet to meet! Below are a few of our favorite photos from the Light Up Parade, we hope you enjoy!
If you’d like to invite us to participate in an upcoming event in Wembley, let us know by emailing us at Danielle@CanadianFiberOptics.ca!
Getting blazing fast internet is awesome and you’re sure to enjoy every single aspect of it, but there are often questions regarding the billing of services, how it works and where you pay. This article will address and answer the most common questions we receive regarding your billing.
How will my first bill look and what are the charges for?
On your first bill you will see a charge for your modem and a charge for installation, immediately below each of these charges you will see a credit for the equal amount. It is important to note that if you did not sign-up for our pre-installation promotion before September 1st then you may not see an installation credit.
All billing is conducted on the first of every month, no matter when you sign up for service and receive installation. We will prorate your bill to account for these fluctuations is usage before your first official bill. What this means is your first monthly bill will include a charge for the days between your installation and when you receive for bill. For example, if your service is installed on the 15th of the month, you next bill will include 15 days of service on top of your first monthly charges to cover that time – It is completely normal to see a slightly higher number on your first bill as It reflects this period of usage.
How do I set up my billing?
Below you’ll find important Information about navigating the basic functions of our customer portal as well as the step-by-step process for adding your preferred payment method. You can choose a direct withdrawal from your bank account, or you can make payments via credit card, autopay is optional and recommended to maintain consistent payments when paying by credit card.
If you have any further questions or require a customer service representative to assist you with your bill, please call 587-332-6880
Contact us to see if your home is in our active zone to get rural Alberta’s fastest internet in Wembley! If you’re not in our current zone for construction, you can still sign up and have your home pre-registered for installation for zero up front cost!
Beginning our design and planning phase for building fiber infrastructure in Grande Cache represented a huge milestone for our business and a turning point in Grande Cache’s efforts to find better connection, both in business and in every day life. Although our industry told us that the project was not possible we were determined to find success where others could not. We began construction on our first official large scale project to completely connect a community to fiber. we began by connecting with community members, working with businesses and government to find solutions and the best paths forward. The excitement took off after finding a deep connection to the community spirit through our amazing Community Ambassador, Danielle. Throughout the project we discovered so much more about what makes this mission so valuable to us and those we’re serving. However, Grande Cache was just the beginning of our push to make 2021 the biggest year ever.
The Summer Rush
While construction raged on in Grande Cache we found real traction in other projects, specifically Wembley and Valleyview. These projects came about in rapid fashion, with intense efforts to put fiber in the ground as soon as we could – hopefully before the frost of winter. The summertime was an incredible season of momentum, building and connecting communities – with our new projects breaking ground in record time we saw both Wembley and Valleyview have their first official connections up and running well before fall came about. One of the chief successes we saw, was officially launching Valleyview as Canadas first 10G community with Canadas fastest residential internet! The summer was full of these rich experiences and so many lively events in each of our communities. From ice-cream tents, pancake breakfasts, and rodeos, to parades, clay shoots and coffee shop hangouts, we truly got to see some of the best that each of our communities has to offer.
Embracing Colder Seasons
As winter loomed over Alberta, we looked further into our plans for connecting our communities in the fastest possible timeline. We continued to host events, receiving more customer questions and their hopes of a connection early in the new year – a solution became clear. We committed to build throughout the winter, in the cold and snow. Winter construction will be key to our progress – we’ve already built the most rural residential fiber of any company this year, but our goals require us to build even more and even faster to meet the needs of our communties! We are building Canada’s fastest network the only way you can, with the hard work and determination of an incredible construction team, paired with the passion of our communities to see these projects completed.
Looking On To 2022
Work in 2021 may have come to an end, but 2022 holds so many new and exciting opportunities, with plenty more work to be done to connect our current communities to world-class, absolutely essential, fiber infrastructure. New and exciting projects have come to fruition, with Sturgeon County becoming our newest and most recently announced endeavor. This project will fulfils our mission of not only connecting rural communities, but also connecting farms to world-class fiber infrastructure. There is so much to look forward to in 2022. To celebrate where we’ve been and how far our communities and their vital projects have come, we have created a brand new page, highlighting some of our favorite moments of the last year. We made sure to include a few details of these new projects coming in 2022 and we’re sure it will be very exciting news to many. We cannot wait to bring these new communities onto the right side of this new digital landscape we enjoy in Canada. If we have not built in your community, you can let us know by filling out the invite usform – we’re always looking for new communities to connect! We believe every community, big and small, deserves digital equality and the freedom to access the world around them without hinderance. 2022 will be a year of new connections, rural development and growth in rural communities that Canada needs. Visit the new “Our Communities” page and invite us to our community if you have not already!
Residents and businesses in Sturgeon County are officially one step closer to having reliable, accessible, and affordable high-speed internet right to their door. After an extensive selection process, Sturgeon County has partnered with Canadian Fiber Optics for the development and operation of a fiber-based internet service, starting with a pilot project in the south-west corner of the county that includes the Hamlets of Villeneuve, Calahoo, and Riviere Que Barre, the Villeneuve Airport, and the Heritage and ProNorth Industrial Parks.
“High-speed internet is a need-to-have versus a nice-to-have for our residents and businesses, which is why we approved the broadband strategy and are investing up to $7.3 million for the pilot project area. Sturgeon County is very excited to be working with Canadian Fiber Optics to help fulfill Council’s vision for a connected community. Their experience with rural connectivity solutions and appreciation of the challenges faced by rural communities made them a clear front-runner for the Sturgeon County broadband project.” – Mayor Alanna Hnatiw, Sturgeon County
Resetting The Benchmark
While rural municipalities have been tackling the issue of rural broadband for a number of years, Sturgeon County’s solution is quite unique. After extensive consultation with the industry, the County developed a shared risk/reward model where both the County and Canadian Fiber Optics contribute financially to the development and operation of the service and share the revenue. The County also implemented an FTTP (Fiber-To-The-Premises) approach that offers residents and businesses the fastest and most reliable technology available, providing speeds starting at 100Mbps (twice the Canadian standard) and capable of 10Gbps, faster or equal to any service in Canada.
A Rejuvenating Investment in Rural Communities
This bold investment will strike directly at the digital divide and empower the residents of Sturgeon County and its local industry. Canadian Fiber Optics believes in the right to connect, grow, communicate and streamline both lifestyle and business. This partnership will foster crucial opportunity in Sturgeon County and ensures future proof fiber connectivity that will benefit both residents and businesses for generations to come.
To connect your business to fiber optic internet contact Cole Summach: Cole@canadianfiberoptics.ca
To learn more about how we can invest and build fiber optic internet in your community contact Johann Reimer: Johann@canadianfiberoptics.ca
