Telus has announced it is spending $53 million in New Westminster in 2021 to connect more than 90% of the city’s homes and businesses directly to its fibre optic network.
Construction on the PureFibre network is expected to start in August, and Telus anticipates the majority of homes and businesses will be connected by the spring of 2022, said a news release.
“The City of New Westminster’s vision is to be a vibrant, compassionate, sustainable city that includes everyone,” said Mayor Jonathan Coté, in a statement. “To achieve that, we are committed to improving connectivity in our community to support digital inclusion and create economic opportunities for our residents and businesses. We’re proud to have an Intelligent New West strategy to guide us and Telus’ investment into our city will both complement and extend our own dark fibre infrastructure, BridgeNet, and the initiatives we have launched to lead innovative thinking and approaches to face challenges and create the conditions our community needs to thrive.”
A direct connection to the network comes at no cost to taxpayers or residents, Telus said, adding that residents can expect to see Telus trucks throughout the community as construction begins.
Last month, Telus was named the fastest Internet service provider (ISP) in Canada by New York-based PCMag for the second consecutive year. The gigabit-enabled Telus PureFibre network is the largest 100% pure fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) network in Western Canada, the company said, “giving residents and businesses dramatically fast upload and download Internet speeds, which provides significant benefits for applications like video conferencing, working or learning remotely, gaming, and smart home security.”
