Telus invests $813M to connect 90 percent of Edmonton to FTTH network

Telus is enhancing its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) buildout plans, announcing that it will invest $814 million to connect over 90 percent of homes and businesses in Edmonton to its network over the next six years.

When the network goes live later this year, Telus will initially offer residents and businesses up to 150 Mbps broadband data services. As it continues to build out the FTTH network, it plans to offer higher speeds, but it has not specified when and what those speeds will be.

During the buildout, Telus will directly engage with existing residents and business owners to discuss its process of connecting homes and businesses directly to its fiber network and installing related infrastructure. Telus said that there is no requirement to be one of their current customers to be connected to the network, nor are there any conditions to purchase services once the network construction is complete.

The buildout in Edmonton is part of a broader plan to invest an additional $3.4 billion in Alberta through 2018 to upgrade Telus' wireline and wireless network infrastructure. Overall this latest rollout will bring the total investment Telus is making in Alberta over the next four years to more than $11 billion.

Alberta is just one area that will benefit from Telus' aggressive broadband buildout drive. The service provider hatched a plan last May to invest more than $1.2 billion to expand its wireline fiber and wireless networks to reach more customers in Quebec through 2016.

Building out FTTH is a key initiative for Telus' last mile network, particularly as it looks to compete with cable operators and BCE, which is also aggressively rolling out last mile fiber and IPTV.

While it will consider other approaches, including a hybrid fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) approach, Darren Entwistle, executive chairman for Telus, told investors during its first quarter earnings call that fiber is going to be the priority.

For more:
- see the release

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