CityWest eyes fifty percent coverage of Prince Rupert by year end for Fibre to Home expansion project

CityWest is making some significant progress in its work towards covering the entire city with its Fibre to Home Services, with the 2019 timetable looking to deliver the service to more neighbourhoods across Prince Rupert by years end.

In an announcement from Friday afternoon, CityWest outlined the path that the build out will take this year as their technicians roll the program onwards.

The entire fibre-to-the-home build, which will take approximately five years to complete, is a $10 million investment into Prince Rupert, the home base for CityWest.

This year, the company plans to build out six more areas of town with fibre services, which represents almost half the households in Prince Rupert.

Announced in May 2017, the construction of new fibre-to-the-home infrastructure began in 2018.

Since the launch of the new service, hundreds of customers have switched over to the new technology as word spreads of its arrival in their part of town.

CityWest credits the success of the expansion program to its work force, with CEO Chris Marrett outlining the company's pace of the work so far.

“Our amazing employees have been hard at work over the last year building our state-of-the-art fibre plant in Prince Rupert. And we’re all very proud that, by the end of this year, almost half the households in town will be able to access fibre-to-the-home services.”

For his part, Bart Kuntz the Vice President for Outside Plant at CityWest observed as to work ethic of the outside team as the push the fibre optic footprint further and further across the city.

“Our outside plant team has kept all our builds on-budget and on-time. We’re lucky to have such a hard-working, determined group.”

The installation plan for 2019 can be viewed below, with the Green areas designating those sections of the city which have already had the service put in place, while the yellow sections indicate which areas of town will be getting fibre to the home before the end of the year.

Map of Fibre to Home installation plan courtesy of CityWest/Debbie Designs
(Click to enlarge)

You can review more of the CityWest announcement here.

The Fibre to Home project is just one of a number of initiatives that CityWest has embarked on in recent months, the Prince Rupert based communication company which is wholly owned by the City of Prince Rupert is also set to work on two other fibre projects  in the region.

CityWest is a member of the consortium that will be delivering fibre optic connectivity to Haida Gwaii, the Central Coast and North to mid Vancouver island as part of the Connected Coast Sub Sea Communication  project announced in 2018.

As well, as we outlined in January, CityWest will also be helping Ketchikan Public Utilities bring fibre optic connection for Southeast Alaska to the continental backbone, with a line to be put in place between Prince Rupert and Ketchikan.

For more items of interest related to CityWest and communications on the North Coast see our archive page here.

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