Plans to improve cellular service in Eastern Ontario are moving ahead while it’s still hoped the provincial and federal governments will step up with funding to improve internet access.
The Eastern Ontario Regional Network and representatives from Rogers Communications provided an update to Prince Edward County Council on Thursday.
EORN’s CAO Jim Pine told council they are still working on getting financial support from the federal and provincial governments for the Gig Project.
If they can get that, they would be asking municipalities to fund another $400 million of the $1.2 billion project.
Pine says their ambitious fibre-to-the-home technology would fix broadband
connectivity not just for the near future but for a generation.
“Right now the CRTC, the minimum standard that they Canadians should have access to is 50 megabits down, 10 up. Our project would deliver 20 times that. And as we like to think, it’s really future-proof because of the technology, the fibre-to-the-home technology and it would fix our broadband problem in eastern Ontario for a long, long time to come.”
Meanwhile the plan to improve cellular access involving Rogers will see work begin this spring to upgrade approximately 300 existing towers to 5G with another 300 new 5G sites to be built over the next five years.
When the work is done, people will be able to make and receive cell phone calls in
99% of eastern Ontario while 85% of the region will be able to support video conferencing, movie streaming and other more data intensive applications.
