CityWest awaits federal funding decision on subsea fibre plans

CityWest is casting its eyes southbound for what may be their next initiative, with the city of Prince Rupert owned communication company awaiting word on their application for funding for a Connect to Innovate grant,

Should they find success in their quest, the program would provide the financial assistance required for the construction of a subsea cable connecting Northern and Southern British Columbia.

If CityWest were to move forward with the infrastructure project, the proposed link to the south could offer up a solution to some of the land based challenges that the buried cable along the Highway 16 corridor can face through natural or human caused incidents.

CityWest continues to keep much of the details related to their plans internal for now, as they wait to hear of the fate of their application.

However, in a short update for the North Coast Review, CityWest officials noted that a project of this scale would not only improve the experience for customers in the Prince Rupert market, but also for their customers in other markets served by the Northwest communication company.  

CityWest  has long been seeking a solution to provide a redundancy for the cities located along Highway 16 to Prince George.

A subsea connection along the caost from Prince Rupert to the
Lower Mainland could be the in the future for Internet users should CityWest
find success in a grant application with the Federal Government

While its anticipated that the the Federal government will announce its funding by this fall, there has to this point, been no timeline offered as to when the Connect to Innovate grants will be delivered, or how much in grant money is set to be allocated.

You can learn more about the Connect to Innovate program here.

For more items related to communications across the Northwest see our archive page here.