Internet connectivity improvements are coming to 413 households from Madeira Park and Kleindale to Egmont.
Telecommunications company Telus received $6.7 million in funding from the federal government to connect nearly 2,000 households in Sunshine Coast’s Pender Harbour and the Sea-to-Sky Corridor.
In an email following the announcement, Telus told Coast Reporter the company’s PureFibre network would be coming to Egmont, Earls Cove, Ruby Lake and Kleindale.
The funding is meant for projects that will connect households by November 2021, according to Minister of Rural Economic Development Maryam Monsef, who announced the funding with West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast- Sea-to-Sky Country MP Patrick Weiler on Feb. 18.
“Access to reliable, high-speed internet is essential for our health, safety, work, education, and the way we communicate,” said Weiler in a news release, adding the pandemic has reinforced the need to “bridge the urban-rural connectivity divide.”
“Today’s investments are an important step to do just that, providing better connection to hundreds of homes on the Sunshine Coast and in Squamish-Lillooet Regional Districts.”
The money is coming from the Rapid Response Stream of the federal government’s $1.75-billion Universal Broadband Fund, which was launched last November. The projects were approved within three months of the program’s launch, said the Feb. 18 announcement.
The goal of the program is to connect 98 per cent of Canadians to high-speed internet by 2026.
As reported last May, Weiler had raised the potential of using COVID-19 recovery funds on high-speed internet improvements with the business community on the Sunshine Coast, describing potential connectivity improvements in the community as “a game changer.”
The rural caucus, of which he is a member, had discussed it as a priority, he said at the time.
“I’ve been working on that on the Sunshine Coast, working with different internet service providers about connecting areas that still have persistent challenges with accessing high-speed internet,” Weiler said. “That’s going to be a key part of the recovery and it’s also going to open up more doors in the future.
