$40K in fibre-optic cable damage sets Cortes Island Connected Coast project timeline back

After a fibre-optic cable on Cortes Island was cut in 17 spots, the company behind the project says the damage will delay final rollout.

The cable was being laid as part of the Connected Coast project, which aims to bring high-speed internet to rural and remote coastal communities in B.C.

Cortes Island is the latest area for the project, and CityWest says before this, the project was moving along well.

“It does substantially slow down the build for Whaletown, which was moving along really well,” Scott Simpson, senior marketing manager for CityWest told CHEK News in an interview.

“We’re really excited, the team is really happy with the work they’ve done, but unfortunately, it’s putting us back just about a month on that build to complete these repairs.”

Simpson says on Cortes Island there are a few test customers who have had this service activated while the rest of the cable is laid, but luckily the cuts happened in an area that do not affect any of the test customers.

However, the area that was damaged would provide service to about one-third of the potential customers.

Prior to the damage, Simpson says the company had not received any feedback from the community to suggest they were unhappy with the project or that might have foreshadowed this.

“Completely out of the blue for us. With any project people aren’t always on board, they like their current [Internet service provider],” he said. “But we’ve never experienced anything that would indicate this level of vandalism and damage to the network. There’s been no indication that something like this would occur in the past.”

The project was expected to be complete in the late spring or early summer, but with this damage, estimated to cost $40,000 to repair, that timeline is pushed back to about the mid-to-late summer.

Quadra Island RCMP is asking anyone with information to come forward about the damage. The detachment can be reached at 250-285-3631.

RELATED: 

• MARCH 27: Someone cut a fibre-optic cable on Cortes Island 17 times, causing $40K in damage: RCMP
• OCT. 29, 2021: Better internet connectivity coming to rural and remote BC coastal communities

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