Canada allocates another $278M to expand rural broadband availability

Canada plans to allocate another $278 million over the next five years to extend and upgrade facilities to deliver broadband services in the country's rural and northern communities, according to an IT World Canada report.

Finance Minister James Flaherty's budget includes a goal of enabling 280,000 additional rural households to get speeds of up to at least 5 Mbps. This latest investment is part of a five-year target the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) set in 2011. Between 2010 and 2013, Ottawa spent $205 million to upgrade area networks to bring broadband service to a number of communities that only had access to dial-up or no Internet access.