Media/Updates

Project Update

July 31, 2009

Since our last update, many thousands of households across Nova Scotia have been offered high-speed broadband services by one of our partner companies.

This update outlines how summer construction schedules are rolling out across the province.

Seaside High-Speed zones

As you may know, Seaside High-Speed Internet commenced its nine-county construction program late last year and to date has provided high-speed service to 425 communities in mainland Nova Scotia and on Cape Breton Island.

Mainland Nova Scotia construction

Seaside has almost completed the backbone of its high-speed network in its mainland zones.

Service is now available to residents of 311 communities in Cumberland, Colchester, Antigonish, Pictou and Guysborough counties.

Currently, the company is erecting smaller repeater poles (see pole on left in photo above), that are designed to fill in signal gaps across the mainland. These additional structures also strengthen the signal in areas where geography is creating interference for customers.

The company is continuing this work over the summer in order to reach its target of 90 per cent of unserved customers by fall 2009.

Cape Breton network underway

Approximately 110 communities in Cape Breton now have broadband services, and that number will increase over the summer months as new towers and poles are lit.

Seaside has leased over 40 sites in Cape Breton and is extending its broadband network across the island this summer. Once public consultation is completed, crews will begin construction on those sites.

For a complete list of communities where service is now available, contact Seaside at www.seasidehighspeed.com or telephone 1 888 965 5511.

EastLink zones

EastLink co-locates equipment on towers

A major part of EastLink's strategy to deliver 100 per cent access to zone 5 and 6 customers is to place equipment on existing towers and poles. This reduces the need for new construction and the number of poles/towers in rural locations. The provincial government is building or refurbishing 12 public safety towers in the EastLink zones that will also be used for broadband equipment.

In addition, EastLink is negotiating contracts to co-locate its broadband equipment on 35 privately-owned towers around the province.

EastLink construction schedule underway

Following an extensive land acquisition and ongoing public consultation phase for 60 new poles and towers, as well as a series of community meetings in spring 2009, EastLink is now in full construction mode, with two or three sites being completed each week, with half of these completed by the end of this month (July).

EastLink public consultation

Public consultation is continuing on a small number of sites, so EastLink has predicted that the remaining poles/towers will be completed by September 2009.

A county-by-county update on EastLink's progress is available online in the Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia section at www.eastlink.ca

New EastLink Service Areas

The next round of areas to receive EastLink's rural broadband service will be 'lit up' this fall. Communities include:

Annapolis County
Stronach Mountain Road, Ben Phinney Road, and Kingston

Digby County
Bear River

Kings County
Harbourville, Ogilvie and Black Rock
Weston, Aylesford and Viewmount

Queens County
Port l'Hebert, East Side Port l'Hebert
Sandy Bay Landings, Granite Village
St. Catherines River

Shelburne County
Shelburne, Woodland Dr. and Jordan Branch
Lower Sandy Point, Gunning Cove
Carleton Village, Roseway
Northeast portion of McNutts Island
Sable River, Sable River West, and West Middle Sable

OmniGlobe Networks

Following a successful advertising campaign that identified households without access to high speed, OmniGlobe Networks has completed its radio frequency engineering and land acquisition in HRM zone 7.

In total, OmniGlobe will be using 15 structures to complete their coverage.

Five of those are co-location agreements, one of which has been completed. The remaining co-locations will be undertaken this summer. The public consultation process ended on July 12th, with no outstanding concerns from the public. This means that construction on towers is moving forward and will see approximately seven structures complete by the end of August.

These same seven locations will then enter the testing phase throughout September, with the rest of the project to be complete, as promised, by the end of 2009.

Receiving Updates

Email updates continue

Thank you for your continued interest in this exciting initiative.

If you are one of the thousands of Nova Scotians who now has access to high-speed service, we hope you take the opportunity to continue to receive these updates.

We will be publishing new updates as the project ramps up over the summer and fall. If you do not wish to continue to receive updates, please email us at broadband@gov.ns.ca and we will remove you from our mailing list.

Twitter - a new way to receive updates

Interested in social media? You can now follow us on Twitter.

We plan to tweet about light ups as soon as they occur, as well as promoting our development activities over the next few months. You can find us at www.twitter.com/Broadband_NS