According to Phyllis Weston, a resident, internet in the village of St. Martins is unpredictable at best.
“In the village people are having problems, it’s on and off. That’s about it,” she said.
Now the federal government is hoping a funding of $40 million announced on Thursday will begin to improve service and reliability across New Brunswick.
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“Right now we’re committed to making sure 100 per cent of Canadians are connected to high speed internet so I think this announcement today just drives home that we are committed,” said minister of rural economic development Bernadette Jordan.
The province-wide network improvements will be undertaken by Woodstock, N.B. based Xplorenet Communications, a company specializing in rural internet service across the country.
To help install the 3000 k.m. of fibre op the company is investing $63 million of its own and says the improvements will provide better service to about 83,000 households.
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Installation is due to start next year and should be finished in 2021.
St. Martins mayor Bette Ann Chatterton has been pushing for internet improvements for years, and said the entire province has needed better internet for a long time.
“It’s just amazing that this is actually going to happen in the next few years, I assume. I have been tirelessly working towards this, because we have businesses that wanted to come here and when they found out that the internet wasn’t quite as stable as they thought they sort of backed out,” she said.
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“It’s something I think the whole province needs. Everyone needs to have access to this new technology and it’s just a piece of technology that will keep us moving forward.”
Weston agreed that the village needs better internet in order to attract business investment to capitalize on the tourism boom the village hopes to see with the completion of the Fundy Trail.
“We need something that’s going to be there for us because there’s businesses coming into the community. They need the internet so they can use it when they need to use it and be sure that it is there for them.”
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