Telus has launched an ambitious plan to invest more than $1.2 billion to expand its wireline fiber and wireless networks to reach more customers in Quebec through 2016.
Under its plan, the telco will invest $640 million across the province in 2014, the final year of a three-year plan unveiled in 2012, and will spend another $700 million in 2015 and 2016 to build infrastructure.
By the end of 2016, Telus' investment in operations and infrastructure in Quebec since 2000 will exceed $20 billion.
A big part of its wireline investment will focus on bringing its fiber to the home (FTTH) service to more homes. The service provider plans to extend fiber-based broadband service to what it says are thousands of households in nine cities: Cap-Santé, Donnacona, Neuville, Pont Rouge, Rimouski, Saint-Apollinaire, Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures, Saint-Georges and Sept-Îles.
The service provider is going to extend the reach of its Optik TV IPTV offering in the Lower St. Lawrence, Gaspésie and Quebec City regions. While it won't release its first-quarter 2014 earnings until tomorrow, Telus reported that it added 38,000 TV subscribers during the fourth quarter.
Besides serving residential customers, the company is also connecting more businesses to fiber, particularly in Quebec's industrial parks and business districts. These connections and its data center in Rimouski will serve as a platform to deliver cloud and managed services. It will also deliver information security and risk management through its recent acquisition of Enode.
Quebec is just one of many new network expansions Telus is undertaking this year. Earlier, the service provider announced it would spend $121 million in Calgary and $99.5 million in its fiber and rural broadband facilities in the Edmonton region. These investments are part of its three-year, $1.93 billion commitment to expand services in the region.
For more:
- see the release
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