CLAYTON, Ont. — Ottawa-based Storm Internet Services has begun connecting fibre-to-the-home customers in the Eastern Ontario village of Clayton, after completing the main underground lines of a new fibre broadband network.
Storm’s fibre-line Internet service offers Clayton residents upload/download speeds of 500 Mbps symmetrically at the top level, ranging down to a 50/50 Mbps package whose performance still exceeds old copper DSL technology – which never existed in Clayton to begin with, says the news release.
Undertaken without any government funding, the FTTH project was spearheaded by a local citizen’s group concerned over the lack of broadband in the Municipality of Mississippi Mills (a community in Lanark County, west of Ottawa), where Clayton can be found. The MM2020 committee approached Storm about building the company’s first-ever residential fibre network from scratch, to achieve the goal of making fibre service available to every home in Clayton by the end of this year.
With 120 individual households signed up in advance, the FTTH project proceeded. Despite the greater-than-expected challenge presented by the Canadian Shield in trenching the 15 kilometres of fibre-optic cable comprising the Clayton network’s backbone, which added time to the build, the Storm team prevailed on the “proof of concept” project, says the release. The company had to bury the fibre because it was told by the local hydro company that insulators on all poles were not up to current standards and would have to be replaced in order to attach telecom cable to them.
“We now consider ourselves ‘fibre experts,’ having overcome so many obstacles,” says Gayle Moore, Storm vice-president, in the news release. “Our team members are too many to mention… it was a small village that helped Storm’s Clayton project become a reality and our first successful residential fibre-to-the-home rollout.”
Storm has needed to limit availability of FTTH in Clayton to about 90 addresses currently, due to the technical challenges with the hard Lanark County ground and related extra costs which have forced the company to shorten the fibre runs. Therefore, about 30 Clayton homes which originally signed up for the service are currently out of reach of the fibre network.
“We would very much like to continue to provide FTTH to more residents in the Clayton area and beyond, but without financial support from communities, municipalities and government, expansion will only be possible as our cash flow permits,” says Michel Lalonde, vice-president of operations and sales for Storm. “Maintaining and expanding our wireless network will continue to be Storm’s number one priority especially during this global pandemic as we have so many clients depending on us during this very difficult time.”
While Clayton represents Storm’s first foray into FTTH, the company does have previous fibre experience on the business side, operating a fibre-optic network it installed at the 417 Business Park in Vars, Ont., six years ago. In the news release, Storm CEO Birket Foster says the latest project means Storm could be on the lookout for more underserved villages interested in deploying FTTH in the future.
Among Eastern Ontario’s first Internet service providers when established in 1996, Storm serves both residential and small-to-medium-sized business clients, providing high-speed access across 8,000 square kilometres of the Ottawa Valley and beyond — with a particular focus on wireless delivery. Storm also operates as a third-party DSL and cable Internet reseller in more urban markets.
