Internet in this area: Poll war is over, reassure Quebec and Bell

The polar war is behind us. The Legalt government co-held with Bel Canada on Monday when it announced it was connecting new homes in the area to high-speed internet.

«[L’enjeu de] We have a lot of access to the support infrastructure (pillars) of Hydro-Quebec, Bell, Telebeck and Teles, ”said Avenir Quebec (CAQ), a member of the Virtual Press Alliance for Orford and High Speed ​​Internet Manager Gilles Belanger. Meeting on Monday.

Getting the infrastructure “for one to two months” is very easy, he reiterated his government’s promise to connect the 280,000 Quebec homes that lost this service by the fall of 2022.

In late January, Prime Minister Franois Legalt criticized Bell for limiting access to his poles, which delayed the installation of optical fibers in many areas.

“We have two summers to do all this. So we talk to Bell a lot, they have to do it themselves to give it to us quickly or lend to their pillars so that other companies can do it, ”he declared.

In a report on the unavailability of highspeed internet in this area published last weekend The Journal of Montreal And Quebec Journal, Despite the announcement of the sleep program, it was still too late for suppliers to gain access to Bell’s poles.

“It’s not normal, at 21^E Century, the lack of a proper internet connection ”, Eric first responded to a spokesman for the government’s digital transformation in Cairo.

However, access to the poles was “not as simple as it was last month,” said Charles Gosselin, director of government affairs and relations with the Bell community in Quebec.

“Permissions are going out, companies are running the network. Access to poles is no longer a contemporary issue, it is a fixed issue,” he added.

Other challenges

However, other problems may arise in the wake of the government’s goal of connecting all homes in the province by 2022, including a shortage of fiber optics.

“Maybe in a year we will see other provinces or other countries that have a problem in terms of internet expansion because there is not much fiber available worldwide,” explained MP Gilles Belanger.

It is for this reason that the government hopes to announce deals connecting all Quebec homes by next March.

During the 2018 election campaign, the CAQ promised to connect 340,000 homes without high-speed Internet to the network in its first term.

Of that number, 280,000 homes are still waiting, but about 170,000 of them have already been targeted by Quebec and Ottawa-funded projects. Therefore these should be connected at high speed by June 2022.