Feds, Alberta to Spend $225 Million to Expand Internet to 82,000+ Homes

The federal and Alberta governments are spending up to $224.78 million on another round of high-speed Internet projects across the province.

The money will go toward 26 projects expected to connect 82,584 households in rural and remote areas, including 1,634 Indigenous households, while Ottawa and Alberta are splitting the cost. The math works out to about $2,722 in funding per household expected to be connected.

There is also a separate $24.5 million federal investment going to Arrow Technology Group for a fibre project that is expected to reach another 1,059 households in four communities, including 676 Indigenous households.

Add that in and the total comes to roughly $249.3 million for 83,643 households, or about $2,981 per household.

That does not mean the government is spending nearly $3,000 just to hook up each home. The money also covers things like fibre, towers, backhaul and other network infrastructure.

Still, the size of the taxpayer bill raises a pretty obvious question: why not use more satellite Internet for some of the hardest-to-reach homes? SpaceX’s Starlink already covers much of rural Canada and does not require fibre to be run to every property.

Ottawa has also funded Starlink before through the Universal Broadband Fund. In 2022, the federal government spent just over $1 million on a Manitoba project that was expected to connect up to 1,162 rural households using Starlink. That worked out to roughly $900 in federal funding per household.

The latest spending is part of a broader $780 million broadband agreement between Canada and Alberta announced in 2022.

The federal government says the goal is to bring minimum Internet speeds of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload to rural, remote and Indigenous communities that still do not have reliable high-speed access. Ottawa is aiming for every Canadian household to have access to high-speed Internet by 2030.