To the residents of Denman and Hornby Islands,
We at CityWest hope you’re doing well the first month into 2022! We’ve done a lot of work together over the last few months with the Comox Valley Regional District and the Internet Committees on your islands, and that hit a high note with the astounding success of the referendum at the end of November. With that in mind, we wanted to give you a bit of an update of what we’ve been up to since then, and to give you a high-level view of our plans for the year.
Since the referendum, we’ve continued to promote our “Dropping In” campaign, where you can sign up for a drop to your house. We also opened up pre-registration in December, which allows you to pick the packages you want today; once we’re ready to install services, you’ll get 2 months off, just for pre-registering! If you’d like to pre-register, please visit www.citywest.ca/south-waitlist
On the construction front, we’ve been very busy over the last month to secure permits and find a contractor to do the civil work on your islands. All the work on the project will be overseen by our Outside Plant and Project Management departments, who have many years of experiences undertaking builds like these. We’re doing our best with ordering, given the major disruptions in the supply chain all over the world.
The contractor will be laying the fibre underground along the roadways, and they will also be involved in bringing the drop to your door. We are planning to start this phase of the build in the springtime, and hopefully have it finished by late fall.
And that’s just one part of the project! In parallel, we’re also working to build the Connected Coast project, which will be the undersea backbone that will be providing you with tonnes of bandwidth.
This massive project – which, when complete, will stretch 3,400 kilometres underwater and will connect 139 communities – is currently in the construction phase, and already it has laid 50 kilometres of fibre in northern B.C. communities. We have been working hard to bring the Connected Coast to your islands as well, and we are estimating that the cable lay will be happening late in the summer. After that, we’ll be commissioning the shoreline landing, which is the physical connection between the subsea fibre and the underground network on your islands. Once all that is complete, it will be ready to connect customers to improved Internet, as well as TV and phone services!
As you can probably appreciate, for two projects of this size, there are many, many dependencies that may push back the timelines, including: delays with permitting, materials being choked by the supply chain, weather, and Covid. We will do our best to make sure these projects are completed as quickly as possible, and communicate any changes in the schedule as soon as possible.
Thank you very much for all your continuing support. We’re looking forward to serving you as customers, and perhaps even meeting you in the months ahead!
Sincerely yours,
Chris Armstrong
VP of Sales & Marketing
CityWest