MONTREAL – Bell Canada said today it will deploy fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) in Québec City and to new housing developments in Ontario and Québec, and that its IPTV service will be widely rolled out in Toronto and Montreal in 2010.
"Investment in broadband networks and services is a core strategic imperative at Bell. We’re actively building the communications platforms that support the growth of competitive new Internet, video and other digital services now and into the future," said George Cope, president and CEO, in a press release. "Bell is executing with significant investments in both wireless… and in wireline.”
The three-year plan to deploy FTTH across the Québec City region will include Ancienne-Lorette, Beauport, Charlesbourg, Lévis-Wolfe, Loretteville, St-Cyrille, Ste-Foy, St-Nicolas, St-Réal and St-Romuald and offer consumer and business customers Internet download speeds of at least 100 Megabits per second and upload speeds of at least 20 Mbps. Bell’s Québec initiative is also by far the largest city-wide FTTH rollout in the country.
Because the Québec City region is largely aerial, these fibre deployments can be accomplished much faster and more economically than in centres with underground infrastructure, says the company.
Bell also announced today it will deploy FTTH in all new urban and suburban housing developments in Ontario and Québec beginning in the second half of 2010. This is in addition to the company’s deployment of fibre-to-the-building already under way, which will deliver 60 Mbps service to approximately 1,600 condominium and apartment buildings in Ontario and Québec by the end of 2012.
The company also announced its rebranded “Fibe” Internet service is now available in Montréal and the Greater Toronto Area, providing customers access to increased uploads speeds as high as 7 megabits per second and download speeds now as fast as 25 Mbps.
"With its increased speeds, especially on uploads, Fibe Internet supports the strong growth we’re seeing in the sharing of videos, pictures and documents in line with the revolution in social networking and online communities," said Kevin Crull, president of Bell residential services.
Fibe Internet employs advanced tools to proactively monitor and optimize customer access speeds and offers comprehensive security features at no extra cost, including parental controls, pop-up blocker, privacy control, Wi-Fi protection, fraud protection and 5 gigabytes of Personal Vault online storage. For more information, please visit bell.ca/internet. Fibe Internet is enabled by advanced VDSL2 technology enhancements to Bell’s fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) network in Toronto and Montréal. By next month, Bell will have passed 1.8 million homes with advanced VDSL2 capability, and approximately 3.6 million FTTN households in Québec and Ontario will be enhanced by the end of 2010.
Bell’s FTTN network also supports the addition of Bell IPTV to the Bell TV line-up in 2010. It will deliver a range of TV and entertainment services over Bell’s fibre network to customers in Toronto and Montréal this year. "Bell IPTV will soon significantly enhance competition and consumer choice in TV services in these core urban markets,” added Crull. Already in extensive consumer trials, Bell IPTV is powered by the Microsoft Mediaroom multimedia software platform
