Bell Aliant brings Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, onto its FibreOP network

Bell Aliant (Toronto: BA.TO) on Thursday invested CAD 750,000 (USD 760,000) to extend its Fiber to the Home (FTTH) network to about 1,500 homes and businesses in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

What's interesting about this latest deployment is that Lunenburg is one of 16 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Canada. According to novascotia.com, Lunenburg is one of the "best surviving planned British colonial towns in North America."

Bell Aliant said it is working with the town, which is a historical city, "to ensure that the build fits within the current community landscape," meaning technicians will work to make sure network construction won't damage any of the old buildings and streets.

Nova Scotia has been one of Bell Aliant's key build out targets for FibreOP. Beginning in 2010, the telco spent CAD 15 million (USD 15.2 million) to extend the FTTH network to over 30,000 homes and businesses in the Sydney area. Over the past two years, the service provider has brought the FTTH network to consumer and business customers in Halifax, Truro, New Glasgow, Annapolis Valley, Yarmouth, Bridgewater, Digby and Antigonish.  

Similar to Verizon's (NYSE: VZ) FiOS FTTH network offerings, Bell Aliant's speeds are very competitive with cable, offering eligible customers up to 250/30 Mbps packages. Customers can also access a wide variety of IPTV content, including 100 HD channels, in addition to Whole Home PVR, Twitter and Facebook apps.

In April, the telco launched its 250 Mbps/30 Mbps tier, complementing its symmetric 30 Mbps and 70 Mbps download speed tier.

The service provider said it is on track to extend FTTH service to about 650,000 homes and businesses in its territory by the end of the year.

Although Bell Aliant won't announce its Q3 earnings until Oct. 30, in Q2 FibreOP continued to gain momentum. During the second quarter, the telco added 15,200 new FibreOP FTTH customers, bringing total FibreOP Internet customers to 75,500 at the end of June 2012. It also ended the quarter with a total of 63,500 FibreOP TV customers.

For more:
- see the release

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