KAHNAWAKE, QC – The Government of Quebec today announced a $94 million joint investment with the Government of Canada in phase two of Operation High Speed, which is helping bring high-speed Internet connections to the entire province by September 2022.
This new round of funding will provide 18,200 additional households with access to high-speed Internet services. “We also solidified connections that are at risk of not being done by September 2022,” Gilles Bélanger, parliamentary assistant to the premier for high-speed Internet in Quebec, told Cartt.ca. Those connections come from previous programs that did not have strict clauses in their contracts for deliverables.
The funding is being distributed to 13 different projects, run by Coop de solidarité du Suroit (CSUR), la Table d’action en communication et technologies de l’information of the Regional County Municipality (RCM) of Coaticook (TACTIC), Premières Nations sans-fil S.E.C. (First Nation Wireless), Développement Innovations Haut-Richelieu (IHR Télécom), Xplornet, Bell, Cooptel, l’Association pour la télédistribution et radio, as well as the RCMs of Antoine-Labelle, Argenteuil, Autray, Matawinie and Montcalm, according to a press release.
Some of the projects were started in 2017 under the Quebec branché program, said Bélanger. “Those projects were not considering 100% coverage of the territories, so there were some households that were not included.” Their inclusion in phase two of Operation High Speed allows the province to make sure the target of 100% coverage is met within the province’s timeline.
A third phase of Operation High Speed will be announced later this year and by the end of the year all households in Quebec that do not have access to high-speed Internet will have contracts in place to make that happen by September 2022.
There will also be a proposal put together to deal with mobility issues by the end of the year, according to Bélanger. “We do have some issues with mobility and on some main roads there’s no signal, so we are doing the inventory right now, and we will propose something to our [premier],” he said.
“Mobility is very important… you don’t want to get stuck on the road, and if you have an accident, it’s not Internet that will solve the problem.”
