The Manitoba government is looking to jumpstart broadband availability in rural and northern communities.  Crown Services Minister Jeff Wharton says this is the first time Manitoba has sought to use a broad based province wide request for proposals for companies to leverage the provinces under used fibre-optic network.  He explains it will support the implementation of technology that will keep pace with our growing data needs, it will make life safer for rural Manitobans by improving cellular service along long stretches of transportation corridors and in communities that are currently without cellular service and best of all it will be done by making use of a resource that’s already in place.

Through Manitoba Hydro the province owns thousands of kilometers of fibre-optic cable in a network created to communicate with northern hydro electric facilities and transmit data much of which has never been used.