Telecom Trends

Cogeco Data Services has announced a 10 year deal with the City of Toronto to expand the fibre network that already connects all schools and school board buildings (as we wrote about in March), under separate deals with the Toronto District School Board and Toronto Catholic District School Board.

Under the terms of the deal with the City announced earlier this week, Cogeco Data Services will provide a fibre optic-based wide area network to various departments, agencies, boards, and commissions, serving a majority of the City's 50,000 employees.

The new sites will be installed over a three year period with the first coming on-line later this year. Cogeco Data Services expects 95 per cent of construction completed by 2011.

There is a lot of fibre being deployed in a variety of communities by telephone companies, cable companies and alternate providers such as Atria and Cogeco Data Services. Businesses and residences are being served with fibre to the premises solutions, often with multiple suppliers in a building.

How do we improve statistical data collection to improve our understanding of the state of advanced networks in Canada? We'll at this question some more on Monday.