Hydro Ottawa reenters telecom market with Hiboo Networks

Hydro Ottawa is returning to the telecom market with the launch of Hiboo Networks, a telecom that will offer service to businesses and eventually residents of the national capital.The company is expecting to roll out service as of next January. Hiboo will be controlled by Hydro Ottawa Holding Inc. Years ago, the utility formed Telecom Ottawa to serve as a carriers’ carrier, leasing dark fibre to other telecoms, but the parent company divested itself of the assets, selling them to Rogers Communications Inc. That was a mistake, according to the new firm’s interim general manager. “It was shortsighted,” Mark Fernandes told the Wire Report in a phone interview, “Back then, the internet wasn’t as popular and demand was lower.” In the early part of this century, utility telecoms, or utels, were a more common occurrence in the telephony market. With the backing of the United Telecom Council in the United States (now the Utilities Technologies Council), most major cities had a company offering telecom services. Eventually, the UTC spun off a Canadian division. It held annual conventions in such Canadian cities as Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Calgary. As the decline of Canadian utels began, the remaining companies in this country were absorbed into existing American districts. Fernandes does not rule out a return to the UTC fold. “I haven’t really thought about it but it is something we would consider,” he stated. The general manager said Hiboo will initially concentrate on the so-called MUSH sector–municipalities, universities, schools, and hospitals. It will gradually expand to offer its services to businesses in the Ottawa and Gatineau, Quebec area. “Hiboo Networks will provide fast, high-capacity and highly-secure connectivity solutions built on state of the art technology, while delivering the low latency and high reliability network services that the business community increasingly requires to support their international growth and success,” Bryce Conrad, president and CEO of Hydro Ottawa Holding wrote in an Apr. 27 letter to Ottawa City Council. His letter estimates that by 2050 over 50 billion devices will be connected to the internet. Historically, utility companies have had advanced infrastructure and access to municipal rights-of-way. The need for redundancy provides the utels with lots of dark fibre which can be employed by commercial customers. It was the expansion of fibre that fueled the utility telecom boom back in the 2000s. Fernandes explained that Hiboo is doing a soft rollout. It announced the establishment of the network on Apr. 27 as a tool to show the flag. This will make it easier to hire staff over the coming months before the actual launch in 2023.As –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

Hydro Ottawa reenters telecom market with Hiboo Networks

News | April 28, 2022

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Hydro Ottawa reenters telecom market with Hiboo Networks

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