Nipissing-Timiskaming MP Jay Aspin announces more than $9-million dollars for faster internet infrastructure.
Nipissing-Timiskaming MP Jay Aspin announced significant funding to communications infrastructure in northern rural areas to get them up to speed.
The press release from the event states that Aspin was announcing on behalf of the Ministry of Industry James Moore.
A total of $9,036,000 dollars will be directed to three projects.
NorthernTel will receive close to $550-thousand dollars to improve broadband in the Temagami area.
Xplornet will receive $5,279,082 dollars for the Nipissing-Timiskaming region as well as $3,208,879 dollars towards the Parry Sound region.
Aspin ensures that more than 2100 households in the Nipissing-Timiskaming region will be helped with the new funding.
Aspin says rural services have to compete with services found in cities. “The former standard was 1.5 MB and now customers will have access to 5 megabits per second. “
Connecting Canadians is part of a strategy called Digital Canada 150, launched last July, which aims to digitize rural Canada by our 150th birthday in 2017.
The Progressive Conservative government had promised that 98% of Canadians will have access to high-speed by 2017.
Aspin says the digital highway has had little funding maintenance since 2009.
Digital Canada 150 is not a specific program that provides funding. Not-for profit internet organizations have had programs put on hold until after Friday’s announcement.
A source said this will be the first time that the federal government called for proposals from for profit ISPs (internet service providers) to build communications infrastructure in Northern Ontario.
