Tag Archives: Dino Tsakonas

Communications

Cortes Island Residents Waiting for CityWest To Connect Them

CityWest started hooking Cortes Island residents up to the internet in December 2023, but many homes are still waiting. As the evidence is anecdotal, it is difficult to say how many people are currently connected through CityWest and how many are not.

Sherman Barker just informed me that he has never met anyone who is connected. After waiting for two years of waiting, he was using Starlink by the time a CityWest crew showed up to do the final hook-up. 

“I have a pile of CityWest cable, all the way from my driveway to my yard, that they don’t want back.”  

Sean Coyote, a techie who works for Cortes Community Radio, said typically people who have yet to be serviced are told their names are on a list. Some, like Sherman, subsequently moved on to other internet providers. Sean added that there are a couple of CityWest trucks working on the island right now. 

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Communications

High Speed Internet could reach Cortes Island as early as December

Cortes Island’s new high speed internet system could be live as early as December, otherwise early in 2023.

Randy, from CityWest, gave Cortes Currents a very graphic illustration of what this will mean. I am currently downloading data from the internet at a rate of 21.35 megabits per second (Mbps) and uploading at 6.50 Mbps.  Randy discussed plans for up to 100 or up to 500 Mbps, download and upload, depending on how much I wanted to pay. That ‘up to’ is important because customers might not experience these speeds at their computer terminals, but we are still talking about much faster service. He also said there are no limits for the number of gigabytes I could use in a month, hence no overage charges.

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Communications

500 kilometres of fibre optic cable laid

The Connected Coast is a joint communications project undertaken by CityWest and the Strathcona Regional District (SRD). They will bring high speed internet to 90,000 households in remote communities from Haida Gwaii to northern Vancouver Island. As of June 2, they have laid more than 500 of the 3,400 kilometres of the fibre optic cable needed by this project. 

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Communications

CityWest may be charging people with long driveways extra

Up until now, CityWest has been offering to install high speed internet to Cortes Island homes for free. They did not take some of the island’s long driveways into account. This is changing, CityWest says some people will need to pay extra.

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Communications

CityWest: Cortes Island’s newest phone, television and internet service

CityWest will also be providing phone and TV to Cortes Islanders who choose these services.

Regional Manager Dino Tsakonas told De Clarke, of Cortes Currents, when she was visiting the crew burying fibre optic cable in Squirrel Cove last week. Her report provides a close look at the work, with 20 photographs in the written version.

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