Girard Budget: Three Bills for High Speed ​​Internet

The bill to connect all Quebec families and businesses to the high-speed Internet has tripled in three years. The Legalt government added $ 1.25 billion to the $ 500 million already on the list in an effort to fulfill its election commitment.

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This is the amount released in Girard’s budget on Thursday. In fiscal 2020-2021, an additional $ 60,660 million will be paid and $ 595 million will be provided for the Internet in 2021-2022.

“High-speed Internet services (HSI) are considered essential for Quebec’s economic growth, especially in the wake of an epidemic,” the Finance Ministry wrote in its budget. “Work patterns, consumption habits, fun and learning ways are always changing,” we add.

In 2018, during its election campaign, the Coalition Future Quebec (CAQ) pledged $ 400 million to connect all Quebecs and provide broadband cellular coverage across the province before 2022. Quebec is accelerating its efforts to achieve (or almost) achieve its objectives. .

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This new approach, called La Clare, should enable it to provide high-speed Internet access to at least 116,000 additional homes by the end of 2022. To achieve this, Quebec plans to subsidize service providers. A strategy aimed at “minimizing delays” in deployment.

Several grants have already been confirmed, particularly Telus ($ 26m), Videotron ($ 240m), Choctel ($ 65.93m), Bell ($ 108m), Coco ($ 208m) and Xplornet ($ 84.43m).

By the end of 2022, the government estimates that there will still be about 36,000 homes to connect to the “most remote areas”. This function should be part of the second phase of the Flash approach due to costs.

The CAQ counts on Ottawa’s help covering a portion of the bill to connect all Quebecs. The government of Justin Trudeau has already announced that it will pay $ 413 million to support the Quebec project.

The Quebec government has set two other plans since 2016 to accelerate the use of high-speed Internet services in the Quebec Branch ($ 100 million) and Quebec Broadband ($ 400 million) regions.

Between 2016 and 2022, about 250,000 additional homes will be connected to the high-speed Internet.

Currently, one of the challenges when making connections is access to the poles, which can be Hydro-Quebec, Bell, Telebec or even Teles.

– In collaboration with Sylvain Larrock