LONDON — Regional broadband project SWIFT (Southwestern Integrated Fibre Technology) issued Monday a request for proposal (RFP) to improve broadband infrastructure in Oxford County (between Brantford and London).
The project budget is set at approximately $8.2 million with SWIFT offering to fund up to two-thirds of the total project cost. Service providers have until June 19, 2020 to submit proposals and are required to contribute a minimum of one-third of the cost of the awarded project, the news release says.
This is the third phase of SWIFT’s initiative, which aims to improve rural broadband infrastructure in southwestern Ontario and builds on its Phase 2 pilot projects in the counties of Norfolk, Wellington and Lambton.
SWIFT’s newly released RFP invites prequalified service providers to submit network designs and proposals to address broadband service gaps in eligible funding areas throughout Oxford County. Eligible proposals will be evaluated against assessment criteria to identify high-quality projects, says the news release. SWIFT says it will award contracts and funding to successful proponents based on ability to provide the CRTC’s Universal Service Objective of 50 Mbps download speeds and 10 Mbps upload speeds (50/10) or greater, number of premises passed, future scalability of the network and service provider contribution proportion, among other project selection factors.
Selected and approved projects will be announced once SWIFT has completed its evaluation assessment, negotiated contracts and awarded funding to projects that scored the highest based on the evaluation process. According to the news release, SWIFT expects contracts to be awarded and service provider agreements to be in place later this summer.
