Bell Canada expanding direct fibre access at new-build sites

Bell Canada will expand the availability of direct high speed fibre-optic connections to new apartment blocks and condominiums between Windsor, Ontario and Quebec City, the company said on Friday, according to the Calgary Herald. In addition to direct fibre-to-the-building rollouts, the telco said that it would continue to deploy fibre-to-the-node facilities in the Quebec-Windsor corridor, ‘within a kilometre of homes’, with the last-mile connection for single-dwelling households provided by existing copper xDSL lines. Estimates put the number of apartments that will be connected directly to Bell’s fibre network at around 300,000. The deployment is part of Bell’s plan to connect 2.4 million households via high speed fibre infrastructure by the end of this year. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms database, Bell Canada’s broadband subscriber base stood at 2.013 million at the end of June, down by 1,000 in three months; sister telco Bell Aliant registered 15,000 net additions in the second quarter to end June with 726,000 high speed customers.