While 78% of the population of Nova Scotia has access to broadband connectivity, this percentage was mostly located in Halifax, Sydney and other urban areas. This leaves over 200,000 citizens, 93,500 dwellings, 5,600 businesses and hundreds of schools and medical facilities unserved as they are located outside the reach of traditional wired broadband technologies. The lack of connectivity creates a wide range of issues in the province ranging from doctors being unable to share urgent medical information, to students missing online classes. Another issue to tackle would be how to reach a wide area with challenging terrain to provide rural users with broadband that's comparable in cost to urban areas.
The government of Nova Scotia created a rural broadband initiative and set an aggressive goal of 100% broadband connectivity in the province. They recognized that broadband access was an integral part of life, and as such, partnered with its service providers to leverage Cambium Network fixed wireless technologies. This was the optimum solution for providing high quality rural service quickly, reliably and cost-effectively. Over 400 structures were installed with Cambium PTP systems bringing signal into an area, and cambium PMP would distribute it to local sites. This technology was able to bring 1.5 Mbps throughput to rural subscribers at a cost that's comparable to the urban areas of Nova Scotia.