The Cascadia Gateway initiative involves a series of collaborative projects spanning the Cascadia bio-region corridor between Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle, Washington. The initiative embraces the concepts put forth under the "Cascadia Innovation Corridor" project being undertaken by various public and private sector organisations. The purpose of the Cascadia Innovation Corridor member companies is to develop regional business across the international border between the Province of British Columbia, the State of Washington and Asia-Pacific.
"The initiative being undertaken by Cascadia FiberNet is a critical next step forward in meeting the growing capacity demand north and south of the border," said Michael Boyle, strategic planning director at the Westin Building Exchange. "Building an open cable allows for new entrants to thrive and new opportunities to come to fruition whether it be through enhanced cloud services, support of the burgeoning BC media/visual effects industry, or connecting Canada to the Asia-Pacific capacity coming into North America through Seattle. The Initiative opens Canada up to extensive opportunities globally, and will greatly benefit the markets of Washington, BC and Asia-Pacific."
Joe Grech, president of AFL Network Services, added: "We're proud to be the partner of choice to provide construction and engineering services, as well as AFL's world-class fibre-optic cable and accessories for the Cascadia FiberNet infrastructure project. As a company with offices in both Vancouver and Seattle, we know first-hand the value enhanced communications infrastructure will bring to the Pacific Northwest. We're excited to be part of the partnership that will provide increased capacity across the border, benefit communities across the entire region, and create new jobs in the area."
The new network will be the largest fibre-optic network ever built between Vancouver and Seattle, and is the first in a series of eight major initiatives set out to improve connectivity and capacity between BC and Washington, connecting the Cascadia region on both sides of the international border with Asia-Pacific via a subsea fibre-optic cable. In alignment with the rural broadband initiatives in both regions, the completion of the Cascadia network will benefit the citizens and businesses it connects by providing open access, competitive ultra-high-speed bandwidth to urban, sub-urban and more significantly rural communities alike between Vancouver and Seattle on both sides of the border.
The ready-for-service projected date is the end of Q1 2020.
