The province is about to test a plan to use publicly-owned communication towers to provide broadband Internet service to all rural communities by 2009. And, during a visit to Cape Breton on Friday, Premier Rodney MacDonald said a company in industrial Cape Breton will be awarded the lucrative contract. On the Government Procurement website, five vendors listed proposals to provide broadband services to rural Nova Scotia but only Seaside Communications is located on the island. The other companies are Aliant, Barrett Xplore Inc., TDC Broadband and TNC Wireless.

“Whether you are a student or a small business in order for you to access information and to do business the world is almost assuming you have broadband internet,” said inNovacorp president Dan MacDonald, who was responding to Premier Rodney MacDonald’s renewed commitment to push the province forward in technology by making broadband internet accessible to anybody who needs it. “If you don’t have broadband, you are at a huge disadvantage.”

MacDonald says he knows of rural small businesses owners who load diskettes and portable disc drives and drive hundreds of miles to load and download data. Innkeepers had people check in on night one only to move out the next morning because they need broadband internet, he said...

See the full story at Nova Scotia Business Journal