TORONTO – In the Ontario budget, released this afternoon, the province said it will spend $2.8 billion more on broadband infrastructure, “ensuring that every region in the province has access to reliable broadband services by 2025,” reads the document.
Combined with prior commitments (but with precious few provincially funded projects actually begun, let alone complete), this new funding increases Ontario’s investment in broadband to nearly $4 billion over six years beginning in 2019–20, reads the release.
The provincial government says there may be as many as 700,000 households in Ontario are underserved or unserved with broadband (the document did not specify what speeds, latency or capacity count as underserved), mostly in rural, remote or northern areas.
This new funding will also seek to leverage funding from other levels of government including the $1.7 billion federal Universal Broadband Fund, the money aimed at broadband by the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the private sector.
The $2.8 billion in further broadband commitments follows the Supporting Broadband and Infrastructure Expansion Act, 2021, introduced earlier this month.
“If passed, this legislation would remove barriers to help build better infrastructure faster, strengthen communities and boost the economy,” reads the release. That Act would address, among other things, the challenges broadband service providers face with affordable access to public rights of way.
For the full budget document, please click here.
Screen cap is from the budget.
