CityWest finally delivered on its promise to bring high speed fibre-optic internet to Cortes Island.
It has been five years since Victoria Smith, then the Strathcona Regional District’s Special Projects and Sustainability Manager, confirmed that Cortes Island was a proposed recipient for the Connected Coast Project.
The SRD was teaming up with CityWest, a telecommunications company owned by the city of Prince Rupert, to bring this service.
On December 19, 2023, CityWest and the SRD sent out a joint press release stating, “A few weeks ago, we began testing services on island with a select group of beta testers. This was done using the fibre-optic network we constructed on Cortes Island and the Connected Coast subsea backbone.”
Around that time, a CityWest employee informed Cortes Currents they would soon go live in Mansons Landing.
Internet service is being delivered house by house, as CityWest employees make their final service calls.
Shortly after the FM radio broadcast of this story, Sean Coyote from CKTZ emailed, “We’ve had CityWest live here at our place (in Mansons Landing) for several weeks now and it is indeed incredibly fast. 35 to 40 times faster than our old Xplornet internet. We consistently get 500 Mbps download and 50 Mbps upload, and that’s not even the highest tier of service. (You can get up to 1000 Mbps).”
“The one disadvantage over Xplornet and Twincomm is that CityWest died after 41 hours in that multi-day power outage, so it’s going to be useless in a real major emergency situation where we are out of power for an extended length of time. My plan long term is to downgrade my Xplornet connection to a lower service level and keep it alive for real emergencies, but to otherwise use CityWest.”
The written version of this story includes a screenshot from a Squirrel Cove resident who is now enjoying connection speeds of between 106 to 107 mbps down and over 99.5 mbps up.
Prior to this, they were receiving +16 mbps down and +6 mbps up from Twincomm – with periodic dropouts during the day.
CityWest is offering Cortes Island customers plans for 100, 500 and 1,000 mbps packages for prices starting at $88 a month. They are also advertising stream TV and home phones, for $27.00 and $26.01 respectively, and bundles of two or more services at lower prices
The SRD’s press release states that residential customers who signed up prior to December 31st, 2023, are receiving 50% off their first 3 months of internet services!”
Cortes residents who wish to remain with their current internet provider are free to do so.
Twincomm was founded in 2001 and currently serves over 800 customers on Cortes Island, Quadra Island, Lund and Texada Island.
At one point it looked like CityWest was going to purchase Twincomm, but the deal fell apart in July 2021. Dino Tsakonas, who had been Twincomm’s manager up until that point, became a manager for CityWest.
On June 30, 2022, TELUS acquired Twincomm as part of its Mascon by TELUS brand.
On December 6, Twincomm informed customers using their email service that it will be inaccessible after February 15, 2024.
The transition to Mascon by TELUS will be completed on March 1, 2024. Mascon by TELUS is currently offering Cortes residents internet for as little as $44 for 8 mbps down, 3 mbps up. Their fastest connection advertised is 20 mbps down, 5 mbps up for $129,00 a month.
Top image credit: Highly involved retouching for Time Warner High Speed Cable in 2008. Using still photography and separate product shots of milk, cereal, paper, etc. – Photo by Jim Harper via Flickr (CC BY 2.0 DEED)
Sign-up for Cortes Currents email-out:
To receive an emailed catalogue of articles on Cortes Currents, send a (blank) email to subscribe to your desired frequency:
- Daily, (articles posted during the last 24 hours) – cortescurrents-daily+subscribe@cortes.groups.io
- Weekly Digest cortescurrents – cortescurrents-weekly+subscribe@cortes.groups.io