TORONTO – The Ontario government in partnership with Infrastructure Ontario on Wednesday launched a competitive process to find qualified satellite internet service providers to bring high-speed access to approximately 43,000 unserved and underserved homes and businesses in remote regions of the province.
As a first step in the process, interested satellite ISPs need to visit www.merx.com to download a request for qualifications (RFQ) document.
“Depending upon the market response and the outcomes of the RFQ stage, qualified Satellite ISPs would then be invited to respond to a Request for Proposals (RFP), which is expected to be issued in Fall 2023,” says Infrastructure Ontario’s announcement regarding the RFQ.
The Ontario government has been investing heavily to help bring high-speed internet access to communities across the province, with a goal of having every community connected by the end of 2025.
“Our government has made incredible progress on filling high-speed internet service gaps across the province, but we know more needs to be done,” said Kinga Surma, Ontario’s minister of infrastructure, in an Ontario government press release. “Where ground-based infrastructure is currently not an option, a qualified satellite service provider will ensure that the hardest to reach areas of our province will have access to reliable high-speed internet.”
“Infrastructure Ontario is proud to embark on a new, first of its kind procurement for satellite service in Canada,” Michael Lindsay, president and CEO of Infrastructure Ontario, said in the government’s release. “Finding economically and technically-viable market solutions for this ambitious government goal has made Ontario a leader in the field of making high-speed internet accessible to everyone.”
The provincial government’s ambitious goal of 100-per-cent high-speed connectivity across the province by the end of 2025 has likely necessitated this search for a satellite ISP, especially when Ontario had previously expected Telesat’s satellite network to be used to fill in some connectivity gaps.
In August 2021, the Ontario government announced it was investing more than $109 million in Telesat’s Lightspeed low earth orbit (LEO) satellite network, which at the time was projected to go into service in the first half of 2024. The government was committing $109.2 million “to set aside 40 gigabits of broadband capacity on Telesat Lightspeed for local service provider use for five years,” a press release said then.
Telesat recently announced it was changing the prime manufacturer for its Lightspeed LEO satellites, while also saying the first satellites in the constellation are expected to be launched in mid-2026 and to enter global service in late 2027.
