Some residents of Port Hardy, British Columbia will need to keep waiting for fibre optic internet from Telus.
Members of the city — located on the northeastern end of Vancouver Island and packing a population of over 3,600 people — attended a Committee of the Whole meeting to ask when the service will finally be provided to them.
Zouheir Mansourati, Telus’ vice president of broadband networks, told residents that the community has been divided into nine areas in which fibre will be installed. According to Mansourati, eight areas have already been completed, but he says the company needs more time to implement the high-speed internet service into the ninth and final location.
“If you look at the community of Port Hardy, we have subdivided it for network design and planning into nine fibre serving areas,” Mansourati said at the meeting. “We’ve already built eight of them and these were done last summer in a fairly quick manner between May and August of this year, and it went without any glitches… It soon became very clear to us in the ninth fibre serving area we were hitting rock and it was not going to stop.”
Mansourati, who was one of four Telus representatives in attendance, said that it was then that Telus made the decision to put a hold on installation. “We looked at it, had discussions with the district, and we are now looking at redesigning the area with certain adjustments in order to find a commercially viable way to actually take that fibre to the remaining homes and businesses.”
Mansourati said he is “not in a position” to say who Telus may contract to finish the ninth fibre serving area.
Via: North Island Gazette
