The payment is being paid as part of Operation High Speed ​​Canada-Quebec, a project that aims to connect 148,000 homes in Quebec. Videotron is responsible for 37,000 of them. More announcements planned in the coming weeks.

The homes affected by Monday’s announcement are spread across about sixty municipalities. Evidence that the target area is casting a wide net, at least 17 deputies were cited in the press release, many of whom gathered under a marquee in Marieville, in Montérégie.

The cost of connecting these homes is estimated at 31.7 million. The difference between this amount and government support, which is 3.1 million, constitutes a financial contribution to Videotron.

Elected officials who followed each other into the microphone during one press conference after another emphasized how the pandemic demonstrated the essential nature of ubiquitous high-speed internet access in the territory.

“There is even a family that has rented an apartment in Longueuil to do distance education and remote work. And they return every evening to their residence 20 minutes away,” said Gilles Bellanger, for example, Parliamentary Assistant to the President of Quebec, the component of high-speed Internet.

Compton Stansted Federal MP, Marie-Claude Bibeau, insisted that “we clearly need high-speed internet in the regions as well as in the city”. She said this was a “key stake” for business and personal relationships.

Turning on the high-speed internet connection “may also have been slow to implement,” Quebecor and Videotron’s senior president, Pierre Karl Péladeau, backed, at the same time, estimating that “delay is better than never”.

He attributed at least part of this delay to density problems. “Where there was a large population density, investments were made and allowed residents to have very rapid access to what is today, and God knows that the pandemic has proven that to us. There is no doubt that it is a very effective network,” he said.

Over the next few weeks, Videotron will conduct an inventory of target areas to confirm the exact number of households that do not currently have high-speed Internet access and will therefore be covered by the deployment of services.