Canada’s government yesterday (22 July 2014) invited rural and remote communities that lack high speed internet access to submit claims for a portion of the CAD305 million (USD284 million) broadband access rollout funding it has set aside over the next three years under the ‘Connecting Canadians’ programme. The government is aiming to extend internet access at connection speeds of at least 5Mbps – via fixed or wireless networks – to 280,000 households that it calculates currently lack access to such services. Reuters reports that many of the underserved areas shown on the government’s map are in the Prairie provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta and farther west in British Columbia, while Ottawa has stated that the connection initiative should mean 98% of Canadian households will have broadband services by 2017.

Thanks to TeleGeography for the article.