Council approved a motion put forward by Coun. Mike Killick on May 2 that entails Mayor Cathy Heron writing a letter to Telus asking the company to "honour their original commitment" from 2019 to connect all St. Albertans to Telus' PureFibre network.
Telus' 2019 announcement included a $100 million price tag for connecting the entire city and parts of Sturgeon County to high-speed internet.
Telus has connected 37 of the 57 segmented parts of the city to PureFibre, however, construction of the remaining areas, which largely cover the Kingswood, Braeside, Grandin, Heritage Lakes, and Lacombe Park neighbourhoods, has been put on an indefinite hold by the company according to a council backgrounder prepared by Joanne Graham, the city's director of information technology.
Council heard that Telus informed administration the on-hold designation for the remaining neighbourhoods was enacted across the province by the company due to inflationary costs, increased interest rates, and the federal government's decision to ban Huawei technology in Canada last May.
“Very predominantly it's the impact of the federal government's decision to ban the Huawei technology, and to require that (the technology) be removed from all of the existing 4g infrastructure by December of 2027,” Graham told council.
“(Telus has) had to dismantle the Huawei infrastructure on all of their antennas and so primarily we're seeing pressures on the capital that they had available for all the builds across Alberta.”
After hearing the explanation from Graham, Killick said he still wanted to have Mayor Heron write a letter to Telus to see if there's anything the city can do to help the company continue connecting St. Albertans to high-speed internet.
Killick's motion passed with only Coun. Joly opposed.
