Residents of a rural corner of Cumberland County can now get high-speed Internet service thanks to an innovative Cape Breton-based company and a provincial government commitment to provincewide Internet access. Seaside Communications won a competitive tender in January to provide high speed Internet access along a section of the Northumberland Shore from Tidnish to Port Howe.

The pilot project is part of a plan to give every Nova Scotia resident high speed Internet access by the end of 2009. Many rural Nova Scotians can only get on the Internet with sluggish dial-up connections.

Sydney-based Seaside Communications pioneered high-speed wireless service around the Bras d’Or Lakes in 2003 and now uses the technology to provide Internet access to rural sections of Victoria, Richmond and Cape Breton counties, as well as in the new Cumberland installation.

“Using the latest wireless technology from our partners at Motorola Canada gets us around the prohibitive cost of running fibre-optic cable or copper wires to every house,” said general manager Roland McCaffrey. The technology uses high-frequency radio signals to transmit data from towers to small antennas mounted on a subscribers home, making it ideal for rural areas.

Funded in part by the Nova Scotia Department of Economic Development, the Cumberland installation was a pilot project for a provincial government plan to deliver high speed Internet access to all areas of the province by the end of 2009. Tenders for that project close in early August. A consortium of Nova Scotia companies led by Seaside is preparing a bid for the work...

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