ONTARIO – The government of Canada and the province of Ontario announced last week some more details of the more than $1.2 billion in joint funding for high-speed Internet they announced in late July.
Funding will be provided for projects in several regions of the province including central Ontario ($230 million), eastern Ontario (over $362 million), northeastern Ontario (up to over $170 million), northwestern Ontario (over $148 million), southwestern Ontario ($252 million) and Golden Horseshoe (up to over $73 million).
The funding will be equally provided by each government. The federal government’s portion is coming out of the Universal Broadband Fund, while the provincial government’s portion will come “through the province’s Improving Connectivity for Ontario (ICON) program,” confirmed Hayley Cooper, press secretary for Kinga Surma, Minister of Infrastructure and Member of Provincial Parliament for Etobicoke Centre, in an email to Cartt.ca. “This is a part of our historic commitment of nearly $4 billion in funding to ensure that every region in the province has access to reliable broadband services by the end of 2025,” Cooper said.
The total number of houses the funding will bring high-speed Internet access to totals nearly 280,000. The complete lists of communities to be served in each area of the province can be found here:
- Eastern Ontario
- Northeastern Ontario
- Northwestern Ontario
- Central Ontario
- Golden Horseshoe
- Southwestern Ontario
There was little new information contained in the press releases for each region of the province, despite there being over $1.2 billion in public funding involved. There is still no information that has been released about which Internet service providers are involved in these projects and requests for this information made by Cartt.ca to ISED were not returned by deadline. We will update this story once more information is released.
Updated August 11:
ISED has informed Cartt.ca via email applications are still being assessed “and more details will be shared in due time.”
