Bell Aliant, Cogeco, others bring fiber to 50 Eastern Ontario business parks

Bell Aliant, Cogeco and Utilities Kingston have been awarded contracts from the Eastern Ontario Wardens' Caucus (EOWC) to provide fiber-based connections to over 50 business parks across rural Eastern Ontario.

The service providers will provide the new business services using a mix of their own network facilities and parts of the 5,500 km fiber-based backbone that was built through the Eastern Ontario Regional Network (EORN).

EORN Chairman David Burton said in a release that they "expect to complete construction of the business parks by 2014."

By extending fiber into these business parks, EORN hopes to attract and retain local businesses that traditionally did not have access to higher speed services.

The $8.17 million business park initiative is part of the broader $156 million EORN project to expand rural broadband access throughout the region. It includes a dozen local access networks that the organization said will increase internet speeds and services to 95 percent of the households in the region by 2014.

Participating service providers are offering residential customers a mix of DSL, wireless and satellite services.

For more:
- see the release

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