Latest / North Shore News / Fibre services coming to Amherst Island

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Fibre services coming to Amherst Island · North Shore News

• 0:00
  At their meeting this week, Loyalist Township Council approved the construction of a new telecommunication tower that will bring fiber services to Amherst Island.
• 0:08
  The tower will be located at the island's fire hall site at 925 Stella 40-foot road.
• 0:13
  The proposal was made by Explore, Inc. under the Innovation, Science, and Economic Development process.
• 0:19
  This process required a statement of concurrence from the municipality, which is now complete.
• 0:24
  Public consultation was not required due to the distance of the proposed tower from other properties.
• 0:29
  Development Services Manager Andrea Furness noted what the next steps will look like for the company and the township.
• 0:35
  The project can't move forward without the tower, but then in addition to that,
• 0:38
  the number of municipal consents are also required from the municipality, from the Public Works Division,
• 0:43
  in order to go across our roads and so on as well.
• 0:46
  Furness described the safety measures taken into consideration regarding helicopters, including air ambulances.
• 0:52
  We do have correspondence from Orange saying that they have no concerns with the location,
• 0:57
  and they actually are, even though they're not required to have lighting on top of the tower,
• 1:02
  they did recommend that as an extra precaution, they still do include some, which they are,
• 1:07
  and is part of their approval through IASO as well.
• 1:11
  Furness noted the company was unable to use an existing tower on the island.
• 1:15
  They did confirm with them as one of the requirements actually of IASO is that they need to explore other co-location opportunities
• 1:21
  before proposing a new tower, so they did prove to me that that was explored and the infrastructure wasn't sufficient
• 1:28
  in order for their plans to expand the fiber and they couldn't make the direct connections.
• 1:34
  Councillor Lorne O'Helless noted she was excited for the possibilities.
• 1:37
  There have been a number of questions that have come my way over the last few days,
• 1:42
  and I think partially it's because we have not really heard from Explorn out on what the plan is,
• 1:48
  though it's very exciting to anticipate having fiber optic on Amherst Island.
• 1:53
  For Amherst Island Radio and the Local Journalism Initiative, I'm Ted Evans.