Northwestel revises northern upgrade plan, investing CAD233m

Bell Canada subsidiary Northwestel has revised a five-year plan for upgrading telecoms services across the North, and has lowered its proposed investment for the programme to CAD233 million (USD236 million), CAD40 million less than in earlier plans, reports CBC news. Northwestel maintains that it will deliver the same level of modernisation on the reduced budget, while its president Paul Flaherty added that many of the promised upgrades have already been installed in larger centres, including Whitehorse, which already has 4G LTE mobile services and 50Mbps internet connections. He identified 26 communities out of 96 in the North that lack advanced services, all of which are earmarked for upgrades in the latest investment plan, which promises to at least double internet speeds in each area. Following the rollout, Flaherty says that high speed mobile services for smartphone and tablet users will be available in ‘virtually every’ northern community. The revised five-year plan was submitted to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) this week after an earlier proposal was rejected by the regulator.