Flashfibr launches $400M investment
By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express
Over the next four years, a new telecom company is looking to make the Internet in Oshawa among the fastest in the country.
Investing $400 million over the next four years, Flashfibr will be working in partnership with the city and the Oshawa Power and Utilities Corporation (OPUC), with construction on a new fibre optic network starting next month.
Starting in the city’s downtown, the initial plan is for services to business and institutions by the end of June and for residents later in the summer.
“Durham deserves better data,” says Howard Morton, the company’s CEO. “This is really about providing the infrastructure that helps create growth and helps encourage other companies to come to the region.”
According to Morton, the company plans to install more than 1,000 kilometres of fibre network over the next four years. The network will provide speeds starting at 300 megabits a second, roughly 27 times faster than what currently exists, Morton says.
“Speed is part of the game, but the other part for us is to create reliability to have the most secure Internet access that is supported, developed and comes from the community in Durham Region because we want to create competitive advantage for the region,” Morton says.
With that said, Morton says that prices will be roughly 30 to 40 per cent less than what residents are paying today.
For Mayor John Henry, the fibre network is set to have similar impact to the construction of a cross-country railroad many years ago.
“When Canada was founded 150 years ago, our founding fathers decided they needed to connect the country and they built a railroad. The railroad today is broadband, the ability to send information. For us to have a $400-million announcement, $100 million invested each year over the next four years, to turn Durham Region into the first gigabyte region in Canada is an amazing story,” he says. ” What it’s going to do for all industries, whether it be advanced manufacturing, healthcare, communications, for our residents to be able to reverse-commute, where they work on big projects at home…and all the expansion, the investment, the businesses that will spin off of this, is an awesome story for the Region of Durham.”
The Oshawa project marks the first for the company, which has previous executives from Blackberry creators Research in Motion, Rogers, UPS and CIBC on its team.
“We specifically chose Oshawa because of the economic revolution that is going on in this city,” Morton says. “We are proud to call Oshawa our home because we’re seeing the growth.”
According to Morton and Mayor Henry, discussions on the project date back to 2013. However it wasn’t until this year that the company officially formed and secured their funding from a combination of private and institutional funders.
“The process started about five years ago, but really in the last three and a half years, we’ve been working really hard and have come up with a great partner in FlashFibr and a vision for the region that is going to take us to the next level,” Henry says. “We’re home to four universities and a community college, so what it’ll do for UOIT and Durham College and Trent, what it’ll do for Queen’s and telemedicine…is exciting. For our residents, it means they’ll be able to do big things from home – more quality of life, more family time.”
– With files from Graeme McNaughton