Xplore Gets $63M from Feds, Alberta to Expand High-Speed Internet

Xplore announced today it will receive $63 million in federal and provincial government funding to connect over 8,800 households in rural Alberta to high-speed Internet.

The funding is part of a broader plan by Ottawa and Alberta to expand broadband access to 14,400 households, including 800 Indigenous households, across 120 communities in the province. Xplore’s high-speed internet will bring speeds of up to 1 Gbps and unlimited data to over 8,800 of these households.

“This is another important milestone in our ongoing effort to deliver high-speed connections to more Canadians in rural communities,” said Geoff Lowe, Interim CEO of Xplore, in a statement on Monday. “Building upon our recent fibre deployment successes in Prince Edward Island and Quebec, and our ongoing work in Ontario, this new project in Alberta underscores Xplore’s goal of bringing gigabit-speed fibre-to-the-home broadband services to more than 500,000 homes over the next few years.”

Xplore has been expanding its fibre network across Canada, finalizing commitments in Prince Edward Island and connecting 33,000 households in rural Quebec to high-speed Internet last year. The company has also secured a financing framework agreement to support ongoing and future fibre-to-the-home broadband expansions in rural areas and to enhance its 5G network.

Funding for this Xplore internet expansion comes from the federal government’s Universal Broadband Fund and the Alberta Ministry of Technology and Innovation. The $3.2 billion Universal Broadband Fund doles out money to expand high-speed Internet across the country. The aim is to bring minimum internet speeds of 50 Mbps download and 10 Megabits per second to rural and remote communities.