Less than a month after the province announced a $300-million plan to wire 420 Alberta communities with high-speed Internet service within three years, TELUS has rolled out its own $500-million plan to plug in several Alberta and B.C. communities.
But TELUS company officials deny their five-year strategy is a response to the Alberta Supernet project led by the provincial government and industry competitor Bell Intrigna.
“The bottom line is this is an initiative that has been under way for quite some time. It’s not tied to, or as a result of, the announcement by the Alberta government,” company spokesman Doug Strachan told Business Edge.
The project calls for ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line) service to be available to all residential and business customers in 38 communities in both provinces. By the end of the five-year plan, at least 70 per cent of both the populations in B.C. and Alberta will have access to the service.
“While it is obviously easier to meet demand more quickly in the more densely-populated urban areas, we continue with plans to connect ADSL service to smaller communities as well,” TELUS president and CEO Darren Entwistle said in a statement Monday.
TELUS will invest $200 million next year, with the goal of doubling the number of its high-speed customers to 160,000 by the end of 2001. Early this month, the provincial government announced a three-year plan by a consortium of companies, including Toronto-based Bell and Calgary’s Axia NetMedia and Wi-LAN, to build a province-wide high-speed network.
The agreement calls for the province to spend $193 million on providing initial infrastructure for the 8,400-kilometre fibre-optic network. The Bell Intrigna consortium bid beat out other competitors, including Burnaby, B.C.-based TELUS.
When asked how TELUS plans to compete in rural areas with the Supernet, which plans to link schools, hospitals, business and homes in rural Alberta, Strachan said: “Competitors are always going to be there . . . we’re focused on doing what we think is going to be most effective for us. The competition is always a factor as you make your decisions, but in the end we’ve stated very clearly this is one of the cornerstones of our strategy going forward.”
Earl Hickok, who serves on the provincial government’s ICT committee for e-health and e-government, says the Alberta Supernet will help pave the way for services, particularly in rural areas, which might have been previously ignored by telcos in an open marketplace.
“I think with Bell getting this (Supernet deal), it stiffens the competition. You can bet there’s now going to be even cheaper, faster connectivity for Albertans. Bring on the competition . . . it’s what’s going to bring the prices down,” said Hickok, president and CEO of Calgary-based software provider Tecskor.
