Morden's independent high-speed Internet service, Morenet, has been plagued with unforeseen challenges, having several delays reaching their goal of city-wide coverage by fall 2018.

After the discovery of technical issues this summer, Morden Mayor Brandon Burley says with a solution now found, the tentative timeline for service expansion is this Spring.

"We just got the Grant Street tower up, which will service South Dale...The one at Nelson Park, the foundation has been poured, and the one for the North Central part of town is ready to go as well. So my understanding is by Spring those two towers will be up, and it will put about another 25 percent of the population online."

Burley says the city had been sold towers with the promise they were CSA approved for the loads; this was discovered not to be the case and reported to the incoming council.

"The problem we encountered was when we came into office; we were reported by the deputy city manager who was also the contractor, that said the towers we had purchased at that point were 112 feet were engineered and CSA approved for height, but not height and load."

With the towers located in public parks, Burley says there was a concern that equipment could fall and injure someone. Equipment failure would also be crippling to households and the economy if the Internet service the city was providing went down. Consultations with professional engineers have shown the towers are usable if reduced in height from 112 to 80 feet; this requires an additional tower to proved appropriate coverage.

Though the city has to install an additional tower, the cost of shorter towers is cheaper says Burley, and the city remains on budget for this project. 

Burley notes the city has signed a contract with Dave Haines, who was involved with Morenet since its inception. Haines has given assurances that towers can be put up at a rate of one every six weeks and tasked with delivering full network coverage in 2019.