Telus to Spend $1 Billion on B.C. Infrastructure in 2013

Telus’s new national headquarters | BCBusiness
Telus’s new national headquarters in downtown Vancouver.

The telco provider will expand LTE network coverage, extend rural wireless service and wire new homes with fibre optic cable

The investment is part of Telus’s three-year, $3-billion commitment to spend on new technology and infrastructure in B.C., building on the $29 billion the company has invested in operations and technology in B.C. since 2000.

Ninety per cent of B.C. residents will be connected to LTE by the end of 2013, which promises faster data services and enhanced capacity in urban areas. New homes and businesses will be connected direct to fibre optic cable, which according  will improve Internet speed, capacity and power, according to Telus.

“We’re connecting more B.C. residents with fibre-optic cable and wireless services,” says Shawn Hall, spokesperson for Telus. 

The company is also making a push to connect rural areas and highway corridor with wireless services. “We’re part way through a program with the provincial government to connect 1,700 kilometres of unconnected highway corridors with wireless services,” says Hall. 

Telus’s investments in the Lower Mainland includes $21 million in Surrey, $5.5 million in North Vancouver and $6 million in Burnaby, all increasing wireless capacity and laying fibre optic cable, and  $300 million in Vancouver on infrastructure and the construction of Telus Garden, a 53-storey tower that will house Telus’s new downtown headquarters.

In Kamloops, the company is constructing an $85-million cloud computing data centre set to open in the final quarter of 2013. The high-security centre will store data for Telus’s corporate clients.

Telus is Western Canada’s largest telecommunications company with 7.7 million wireless subscribers and 1.4 million Internet subscribers across the country.