MONTREAL – Bell Canada said today it will hit the gas again on its rural Wireless Home Internet rollout, including an expansion of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speeds to more locations.
“The Wireless Home Internet program is fully funded by Bell but also enabled by a federal government policy environment that fosters investment in critical network infrastructure,” said Mirko Bibic, president and CEO, in a release which also resends another message to the federal government. “With Covid-19 underscoring the critical importance of high-speed Internet access for Canadians everywhere, and government support for enhanced investment, Bell is dedicating even more resources into expanding and enhancing our WHI network rollout to rural Canada.”
“On August 15, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry Navdeep Bains issued a statement regarding wholesale Internet rates set by the CRTC last year that are currently under review. Minister Bains made it clear the CRTC’s rates could ‘undermine investment in high-quality networks, particularly in rural and remote areas.’ He added that ‘incentives for ongoing investment, particularly to foster enhanced connectivity for those who are unserved or underserved, are a critical objective of the overall policies governing telecommunications, including these wholesale rates’,” added the press release in something of a commentary on yesterday’s Federal Court of Appeal decision, without mentioning the FCA by name.
Bell says it is on track to deliver WHI coverage to almost 50% of its targeted footprint by the end of 2020 with service for an additional 80,000 rural homes and more than 350,000 homes will have immediate access to enhanced 50/10.
WHI is already available to approximately 400,000 households in Ontario and Québec and will reach a million homes in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Québec, Ontario and Manitoba.
In response to Covid-19, Bell accelerated its WHI rollout plan to 137,000 more locations earlier this year. In July, Bell also announced it was doubling WHI download speeds to 50/10 this fall for approximately 300,000 homes and beginning our rollout in Atlantic Canada.
The original plan for WHI however, when it was announced in June 2019, was for 1.2 million homes passed, but the company trimmed the rollout to one million after the CRTC set new wholesale internet rates in August 2019, a battle which still rages. We have checked with Bell before and the accelerated WHI build remains within the lowered one million target.
“We built WHI specifically to meet the needs of communities that have been tough to serve with traditional wireline and wireless connections, including the capacity for future upgrades that capitalize on innovations in 5G wireless as necessary spectrum becomes available,” said Stephen Howe, Bell’s chief technology officer, in the release.
“At the same time, we’re also continuing to roll our all-fibre network – the world’s fastest Internet technology – into more suburban and rural regions across Manitoba, Ontario, Québec and the Atlantic provinces.”
Photo of a wireless tower with WFI courtesy of Bell Canada.
