Eastern Ontario's Broadband Network Gains International Recognition

HASTINGS COUNTY, ON, Oct. 24, 2013 /CNW/ - The Eastern Ontario Regional Network (EORN), Ontario's largest rural broadband network, was one of just five organizations shortlisted for an international award recognizing its efforts to deliver greater broadband penetration to the region.

The award is from the Broadband World Forum, an industry non-profit organization, which recognizes organizations for increasing high-speed access by spurring investment, reducing rollout costs or creating effective public policy.

"This is a tremendous honour and a credit to the people of Eastern Ontario. It is also great recognition of our federal, provincial, municipal public and private sector partners, who all stepped up to the plate," said Eastern Ontario Wardens' Caucus (EOWC) Chair Rick Philips.  The Wardens' Caucus created the EORN project as a key economic development tool for the region.

"This honour really demonstrates the exceptional work of the EORN project to expand broadband in Eastern Ontario," said EORN Chair David Burton. "We always thought what we were doing was world class, and now we know it."

The Broadband World Forum is focused on engineering smarter and faster broadband networks and defining best practices for global networks. The winner of the award was a British telecom that manages national internet infrastructure. The announcement was made at the Forum's annual international conference held this week in Amsterdam. Others on the shortlist included an international telecom from China, and telecommunications firms from Indonesia and Malaysia.

EORN was created by the Eastern Ontario Wardens' Caucus to manage expansion of the rural broadband network in Eastern Ontario. The $170 million project is funded by federal, provincial and municipal governments and private sector investment. It includes a 5,500-km fibre optic backbone and more than a dozen local access networks that will increase internet speeds and services to 95 per cent of the households in the region by 2014.

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SOURCE: Eastern Ontario Regional Network

For more information, contact:
Lisa Severson, Communications & Stakeholder Relations Officer, EORN
613-213-8520, [email protected]