The Internet makes geography disappear. Where a company is located becomes the least important factor in making sound business decisions.

Confirming a story first reported by Business Edge three weeks previously, the Alberta government last week announced a contract to build a $300-million high-speed Internet network across the province.

The contract for Alberta’s Supernet went to a consortium of companies led by Bell Intrigna. Bell Canada’s head office happens to be in Montreal. Telus Corporation, which also bid on the contract, happened to be based in Calgary until it moved its headquarters to Burnaby, B.C.

So what?

Daily newspaper columnists who pontificated on the “shocking” decision to award the contract to a Bell-led consortium rather than Telus are still stuck in an antiquated paradigm.

This is the age of interconnectivity and strategic dot-com alliances.

Framing stories about the new economy in terms of an East-versus-West struggle is as tedious and quaint as blathering on about the Calgary-versus-Edmonton rivalry.

The Alberta government’s decision had nothing to do with picking Eastern versus Western companies. It had everything to do with choosing the business consortium with the most depth and diversity to build the first high-speed Internet backbone in any province or state in North America.

Anyone bothering to take a closer look will see that the Bell-led consortium involves a huge prairies component, including several key Alberta players.

John Riddell, telecom analyst for Angus Telemanagement Group Inc. of Ajax, Ont., points out that Bell Intrigna is a joint venture that’s two-thirds owned by the Manitoba Telephone System and one-third by Bell Canada.

So for anyone droning on about an eastern Canadian phone company taking over Alberta, “we might make the case that it’s really the Manitoba folks that are on the march here,” Riddell says.

Bell Intrigna happens to be headquartered in Calgary, has 500 employees here and has 93,000 telephone lines in Alberta and B.C.

The Supernet consortium also includes fibre-optic cable and components supplier Nortel Networks. Its Alberta presence includes 2,000 employees and a global manufacturing plant in northeast Calgary.

How about the Supernet’s wireless partner? It is Wi-LAN Inc., an innovative high-speed wireless data/Internet communications company headquartered in Calgary.

“From a wireless perspective, we’re really excited (about the Supernet), because one of the critical success factors in using wireless is having a high-speed backbone,” says David Bocking, Wi-LAN’s vice-president of Canadian sales.

The company that will manage and maintain the Supernet is Axia Netmedia, a Calgary company providing Net-based solutions for information exchange, communications and lifelong learning. Another consortium member, Netricom, is an Axia business that designs network systems.

Art Price, chief executive of Axia Netmedia, says each Axia business — NetMedia Applications, IP Services and Netricom — will directly participate in and benefit from the Supernet initiative.

The consortium “will provide the infrastructure to put the province in a global leadership position,” Price says.

Another consortium member is Total Telcom, an Edmonton-based firm with 225 employees in Edmonton, Seattle and Arkansas. The company builds and manages second-tier fibre networks between secondary carriers, mostly in smaller networks. Total Telcom executives predict their company’s business will double thanks to the Supernet contract.

Moreover, Bell Nexxia, the general contractor for the Supernet, says it will be operated as a wholesale network open to other retail service providers — including Telus.

Doing good business in the new economy is not like selling real estate. It’s not about location, location, location. It’s all about forming strategic alliances among companies with diverse services and products, not fretting about the addresses of their bricks-and-mortar storefronts

. The real winners in the provincial government’s decision are the 420 Alberta communities who’ll be linked to a high-speed Internet network within three years.

That will provide enormous potential for high-tech companies to locate their operations in smaller Alberta communities, says analyst Riddell.

The Supernet is just the first step in Alberta Science and Innovation Minister Lorne Taylor’s vision for a globally interconnected province. He told Business Edge that the next phase will be to connect Alberta’s new network with high-speed fibre-optic links running to Vancouver and from there, to Seattle and into Silicon Valley.

Last month, the federal government announced a task force to begin consultation on providing rural Canadian communities with high-speed Net access. But Alberta is the first jurisdiction in North America to award a contract to begin turning the vision into reality.

“I think the Alberta government is justifiably saying that it puts them in the lead,” Riddell says.