Internet service 133 times faster than standard high-speed will be tested in Edmonton this summer, an official with Shaw Communications said Thursday.
The Calgary-based company is launching a trial of gigabit Internet technology in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. A community in Vancouver will get the first look at ultrahigh-speed downloads in April.
It will be tested in an area of Edmonton during August.
"The stuff that we're all getting used to on our wireless devices, like watching the Olympics wherever you are, are in high definition. If you're going to deliver that over the Internet, that's incredibly intensive," said Jay Mehr, Shaw's group vice-president of operations.
"So this really just sets up for what's possible and what the customer wants in the next few years."
The technology is 10 times faster than Shaw's Nitro service, which runs at 100 megabits per second (Mbps) and more than 133 times faster than the 7.5 Mbps offered in the company's standard high-speed package.
"It's more a technology trial than a product trial because we still have to figure out the product and pricing definitions that we're going to deliver," Mehr said.
"But it makes possible the whole range of Internet-based applications for residents, and the same network will make a lot of things possible for businesses. In the short term, there may be even greater opportunities on the business side of the market."
The service will be delivered over fibre-to-the-home (FTTH).
"Depending on where you live in Edmonton, you probably have a fibre node that's a block or two from your home."
Shaw claims it is the first provider in Canada to launch a trial of gigabit Internet.
"It's technology that we haven't used before, and we certainly don't want to employ it before we understand it. And there's a significant network build to set it up," Mehr said.
It's still unclear when ultra-high-speed downloads will be widely available for subscribers.
"We could certainly see it available in the consumer market at some point in the next calendar year. In order to get to every customer in Edmonton, that will take a number of years, because as you can imagine in some areas the current coaxial cable is underground so you're digging up streets in order to get fibre to homes."
Mehr said the pace of the network build will depend on the economics of the model and what competitors do.
"I'm not sure whether I'd be in a hurry to sign up for it myself, but conceivably down the road," said Brian Nelson, associate chair of computer engineering technology at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.
Shaw is likely preparing for the future rather than responding to current consumer demand, he agreed. "Over the years, the amount of memory in computers and the size of hard drives and users' expectations just keep going higher and higher.
"As more and more things go onto the Net, including your voice over IP, your television, it may be that every house has a fat pipe like that coming into it for a variety of applications."
