King gets $1.65 M for broadband expansion from feds and province

Yorkregion.com
Jan. 24, 2017
By Simon Martin

High speed Internet is just around the corner for some rural residents in King Township. The federal and provincial government announced $1.65 million in funding Jan. 23 to help bring service to residents and business located in rural areas in King.

As per the agreement, the federal and provincial governments will each invest $825,000 toward the King Township Fibre Optic Expansion with Vianet contributing the remaining project costs.

“Access to better, more reliable broadband connections will provide King Township … residents and businesses with new opportunities to participate in the digital economy,” King-Vaughan MP Deb Schulte said.

“It’s a great day for King,” Mayor Steve Pellegrini said. “This is an issue we hear from residents all the time.”

While the broadband expansion won’t reach every rural resident in King, Pellegrini said it’s a good start. He said areas like the Jane Street corridor, Carrying Place, Highway 9 and Snowball are some of the areas that will benefit most from the expansion.

The Jane Street area will be well serviced because Vianet built a fibre optic corridor from Toronto to Barrie along that route. Vianet had been working with the township to come up with a broadband strategy. “Building fibre optic network in rural areas is costly and complex, but with governments, companies and end users all contributing, the broadband gap between rural and urban Canada will be overcome,” Vianet president Will Gasteiger said.

The announcement lines up with the recent ruling from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that broadband Internet with download speeds of at least 50 megabits per second will be considered a “basic telecom service”.

The CRTC said 82 per cent of Canadians already have access to that target but those speeds remain out of reach for many rural Canadians.

Both the federal and provincial government are heavily investing in broadband infrastructure to help bridge that gap. “Expanding broadband connectivity across Ontario is part of our plan to create jobs, grow our economy and help people in their everyday lives,” MPP Oak Ridges-Markham Helena Jaczek said.

The federal government is providing more than $180 billion in infrastructure funding over 12 years.