Bell Aliant is extending its FibreOP service into more residential homes and businesses in Nova Scotia and Ontario as part of an aggressive multimillion-dollar network expansion effort.
In Nova Scotia, the telco has allocated $2.31 million U.S. dollars to bring the service to 4,700 new customers located in Port Hawkesbury and Port Hastings, while adding new premises to its footprint in Truro, Antigonish, and Sydney. It offers FibreOP in 11 Nova Scotia cities and towns.
In Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Bell Aliant is investing $14.5 million to pass about 24,000 premises with FibreOP service. Currently available in the downtown area of Sault Ste. Marie, it will expand the service throughout the city during the year.
At a time when its traditional telephony business revenues have continued to erode as users cut their landline cord or churn to cable, FTTP has become a major growth engine for Bell Aliant.
During the first quarter, FibreOP contributed 0.3 percent, or $1.98 million to its total of $679 million in operating revenues. It added 17,900 FibreOP customers, bringing total Internet customers to 130,100 at the end of March 2013.
Like its counterparts Bell Canada (NYSE: BCE) and Telus (NYSE: TU), Bell Aliant continues to see more of its FibreOP customers taking a triple play bundle of voice, video (IPTV) and data services. It reported that in Q1, 90 percent of new FibreOP subscribers have the triple-play bundle.
The telco has set an ambitious goal to extend its FTTP coverage to 800,000 premises across its territory. Having passed more than 679,000 premises at the end of March 2013, it appears that it's on track to meet that goal.
For more:
- here's the Nova Scotia release
- and the Ontario release
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