CTI Huron - Home

WHAT IS CTI HURON?

Connect to Innovate Huron is a project that would bring Fibre-to-the Home (FTTH) to approximately 3,877 under-served residents and businesses and a population of roughly 9700 in 11 distinctly rural project areas in Huron County. While a number of competing suppliers exist in every major population centre in the County, only local telecommunications Co-operatives have ventured onto rural concessions to provide last mile fibre to County residents.

What follows is the description of the project and related information as posted in 2017.

The Federal Government’s Connect to Innovate program will invest $500 million by 2021, to ensure that rural and remote communities across Canada are well positioned to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the digital age. CTI defined two types of last mile projects, those lacking any terrestrial infrastructure and those partially-served. To be considered, last-mile projects in partially-served areas such as Huron County, must demonstrate need through surveys, speed tests or engineering studies.

The three Co-operatives backing and building these last mile connections are Hay Communications Co-operative Limited, Huron Telecommunications Co-operative Limited and Tuckersmith Communications Co-operative Limited. Together these three partners have assets of $80 million, annual revenue of $28 million, staff of 87 and co-op members of 16,900, roughly 12,000 of which are over FTTH and FTTN connections. Each of the Co-operative has rural roots going back more than 100 years.

To meet the project timeline, the Co-ops chose surveys backed with speed tests. More than 1700 Surveys were completed. From this data, the Co-ops identified more than 100 CTI defined sectors in Huron that qualify for inclusion in a proposed joint CTI/Co-op/County funded initiative that could be built by the Co-ops within the CTI funding window between now and the end of March 2021.

Currently 82% of residents are served with high-speed technologies including FTTH, FTTN and DOCSIS. After each year of the 3- year CTI Huron project, this will increase to 89%, 94% and finally 98%, respectively.

Current Connectivity

This, as we know it, is the current state of last mile terrestrial broadband connectivity in Huron (shaded green). FTTH = fibre to the home speeds up to 1 Gbps symmetric are possible, FTTN = Fibre to the Node speeds up to 100 Mbps download and 45 Mbps upload, DOCSIS = 1Gbps download 100 Mbps upload.

Phase 1

The project would have 3 phases. Phase 1 of the Fibre to the Home projects include South Huron, Clinton Area, Goderich South and Goderich North. The various colours define the individual project areas. Rough CTI eligible cost $9 million dollars, 4.5 million from CTI, $2.5 million from Co-ops and 2 million from the County. 1,517 additional homes to be passed.

Phase 2

Phase 2 of the Fibre to the Home project would include an area North of Clinton and around Seaforth as well as the Auburn area and a large part of the area South and East of Wingham. Again, the various colours define the individual project areas. Again, rough CTI eligible cost $9 million dollars, 4.5 million from CTI, $2.5 million from Co-ops and 2 million from the County. 1,150 additional homes to be passed.

Final Phase

The final phase of the Fibre to the Home projects would see the Brussels Area, Blyth area and sections West of Wingham and South of Lucknow completed. Again, the various colours define the individual project areas. Rough CTI eligible cost $13.5 million dollars,$6.8 million from CTI, $3.8 million from Co-ops and $2.9 million from the County. 1,210 additional homes to be passed. As said at the beginning of the presentation, project areas were determined based on the following criteria 1) where need was supported by a combination of survey results and speed test data, 2) by eliminating areas where terrestrial last mile FTTN/FTTH/DOCSIS cable are available, 3) identified as serviceable within the allotted timeframe. The remaining area is that which would NOT be serviceable within the allotted timeframe due to proximity. It should be noted that Howick is largely covered by Wightman Telecom and service level data has not been verified.

❮ ❯

The Co-operatives plan to deliver speeds well beyond CTI project guidelines to households and businesses with no usage cap by providing last-mile fibre to the home to the under-served resident and business in the defined boundaries of the project in Huron County. This will be accomplished economically by leveraging and expanding upon the fibre infrastructure already in place which is owned and operated by HuronTel, Hay Communications and Tuckersmith Communications.

Of the $34 million CTI Huron investment, $16 million hinges on approval of Federal funding under the Connect to Innovate Program. Of the remaining $18 million, $7 million has been committed by Huron County and the remaining $11 million would be provided by local telecommunications co-operatives.

On April 5th, 2017, Huron County voted to back the plan on motion: #076-17, moved by Councillor Steffler and Seconded by Councillor Gowing that, “The Council of the County of Huron supports the 2017 CTI Comcentric Networking application in principle conditional on successful Federal funding and receipt of a detailed business plan.” On April 18th, 2017, the Co-ops filed their application for funding.

The project (SITT-00000336) is currently awaiting Federal approval and has not been provided any indication as to when the project may be funded.

On January 17th, 2020, the CTIHuron Application for funding was denied.

Please see the notice here for details.