VANCOUVER, June 25 (Xinhua) -- Canada's small Internet providers operating in the country's vast rural areas like to use new and affordable technologies from China's tech giant Huawei to improve local communications, according to Al Richmond, director of the Cariboo Regional District in British Columbia province of Canada.
Rural Canada is an underserved market with low access to high speed broadband. With nearly one fifth of its population scattering across the expansive hinderlands, remote communities and telecommunication companies are eager to install the technology that could provide fast wireless service.
With a trial project from the British Columbia-based ABC Communications using Huawei technologies equipment, the underpopulated Lac La Hache community, located in the south-central British Columbia, will soon have faster and cheaper communication network.
The project promised to deliver speeds of up to 100 megabits per second.
"Currently, there are limited in speed of perhaps less than three Megabytes," Richmond, who is in charge of service of Lac La Hache community in the province, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
"So to move to a hundred megabytes is a tremendous improvement and it provides the opportunity for economic development in smaller and more rural communities within British Columbia in Canada," he said.
The Cariboo Regional District in British Columbia is governed by a board of Electoral Area Directors, who are elected by rural voters to serve four-year terms. It is comprised of 12 rural electoral areas and four incorporated member municipalities.
"Many of our people who leave rural areas are unable to come back because they can't conduct their business there. So anything we can do to move forward, to safely move forward with high speed broadband access to rural Canada will be good for the economy and good helping for the people," he added.
Canadian companies choose Huawei's equipment in rural and northern parts of Canada because of its reliability and affordability as Huawei's 3G and 4G technology has been deployed across the Far North including in Iqaluit and Inuvik regions in the country.
After years of operation in Canada, Huawei has launched research and development facilities in six Canadian cities including Ottawa, with a total of 1,100 employees, 90 percent of them native Canadians.
