FibreOP rollout halted over pole issues

If Bell Aliant’s super-duper-fast Internet isn’t available in your neighbourhood yet, it’s probably not coming.

The company stopped stringing its FibreOP lines in additional Sault Ste. Marie neighbourhoods earlier this year after what it says was an issue accessing PUC poles that led to “delays, excessive engineering and construction work and increased costs.”

The $15-million rollout of the high-bandwidth service was announced in May of 2013, promising to make download speeds of up to 250 Mbps and uploads of up to 30 Mbps available to 24,000 homes by the end of the year.

The rollout was halted in June, 2014, as a result of the pole issue, says Bell Aliant.

As of this week, service is currently available to 11,681 residents.

Norma Hughes, corporate affairs manager for Bell Aliant said that while the company has worked with other utilities in jurisdictions where it has completed previous FibreOP rollouts, in the Sault it was “unable to reach a solution that would allow us to complete the build in a timely or cost effective way.”

PUC says there were costs associated with upgrading required to meet provincial regulations that govern giving a ‘third-party attacher’ access to its poles.

“I can assure you that the PUC cooperated fully with our Bell Aliant partners, and we did everything we could to accommodate them,” said Giordan Zin, a PUC spokesperson in an email to SooToday. “However, my understanding is that in the end Bell Aliant felt the cost to implement the project here was simply more than anticipated and made the project cost prohibitive under their cost model.”

Zin said some of the upgrades were required due to the city’s ageing infrastructure, which is “a problem across the province.”

The FibreOP program had been hailed by Bell Aliant as a gamer-changer for the city.

New in the Sault, starting today (updated)