Parksville residents can look forward to faster internet speeds with the installation of a 5 Gigabit network underway this fall.
Council heard a presentation by Shaye Draper and Darin Wong from Telus regarding the new fibre network during its Oct. 21 meeting.
“Think about 5G as bringing about faster speeds, allowing you to be able to have more devices connected so the congestion can be addressed,” said Draper, general manager with Telus supporting Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast.
With the new network being installed soon, Telus will decommission its copper network and use 80 per cent less power, he added.
Telus will partner with F3 Networks, a Canadian company specializing in "dark fibre solutions", to roll out the new system in Parksville, according to Wong. F3 Networks will own and maintain the infrastructure that will circulate the signal from Telus.
Parksville residents may have already been approached by F3 Networks representatives, who have been out and about asking permission from home and business owners to install a "fibre drop", essentially a fibre connection, Wong added.
These are free of charge and in the future residents will have the option to sign up for pure fibre internet, according to Wong.
Approximately 11,500 premises in Parksville, including single-family homes, multi-family homes and businesses, will be eligible.
“There’s a lot of people very excited about this,” said Mayor Doug O'Brien.
Also being installed in the community currently are metal cabinets called fibre distribution hubs.
“These devices are passive devices," said Wong. "They don’t make noise. They’re not powered, and their sole purpose is to distribute fibre to individual buildings and premises.”
Construction is set to begin Oct. 23, with connecting of individual homes scheduled to begin Nov. 4, according to Wong.
The project is estimated to be completed by the end of March 2025.
“Think about it as unlimited bandwidth and asymmetrical speed," said Draper. "So we can move information back and forth through the cloud, and that’s not just important for people who might be gaming at home. It’s really important for businesses and if you think about healthcare and how many times you’re sitting there and potentially having a video call with your doctor.”
Coun. Mary Beil asked if the changes will result in any Telus-owned land being freed up for housing. As the company migrates away from copper to a fibre network, real estate opportunities have been made possible in communities such as Nanaimo, Saanich and Sechelt.
"There is equipment in our central offices that were required to run those copper networks and as you start to remove the copper, you can actually shrink the footprint that we require for our central office," Draper said.
Draper added the Parksville office is not a large parcel of land, so “there might be an opportunity but not a significant one”, he said, and added that would be two or three years down the road.
