The New Brunswick government is partnering with Bell Canada to install 10 new cellular towers to improve rural cell service.
“Improving cell coverage is a priority for this government, and, while we’re making real progress, there’s still more work to do,” said Finance and Treasury Board Minister René Legacy in a media release.
It said the province will use existing telecommunications equipment to speed up the process.
Back in April, St. Croix Progressive Conservative (PC) MLA Kathy Bockus made an impassioned plea to the Liberal government to help improve rural cell service in Charlotte County following the death of a young man in the region several years ago.
“And nobody could find him,” she said inside the Legislative Assembly this spring. “He was late getting home. So, his family started a search and they found him 24 hours later, just by chance, he had made it out of his car and he was dead at the rear of his car, but he had his cell phone in his hand.
“So if he had been able to reach somebody, would he still be alive?”
She told Legacy in some places in the province cell coverage is a matter of life and death.
There are only four major telecommunications companies in New Brunswick: Bell, Rogers, Telus and Eastlink. Some have more affordable brands, like Koodo and Virgin Mobile.
At the time, Legacy said it would cost the government $100 million if it were to fix everything right away. Legacy added in April his riding in north-eastern New Brunswick is also “terrible” for cell phone coverage. He is the MLA for Bathurst.
“The member is absolutely right, that’s why we want to start working toward it,” he said.
New cell towers are planned for:
- Oak Hill
- Hibernia Heights (Saint John County)
- Upham
- South St. Norbert
- Grand River
- Harcourt
- Bettsburg
- McGraw Brook
- Riceville (Madawaska County)
- Saint-Quentin
The Department of Finance and Treasury Board (FTB) said the selection process was aided by several criteria, including the presence of a Government of New Brunswick (GNB) owned tower without service.
It also looked at the tower’s capacity to support additional equipment with the least amount of changes, fibre backhaul – fibre optic cables used to transmit data from a local network to a larger core network – and cellular survey data that showed significant gaps in service coverage.
Saint Andrews has also long been advocating for improved cell phone coverage, seeing as the large influx of tourists in the summer months adds strain to the network.
Oak Hill is the only tower planned for Charlotte County and is located in the Municipal District of St. Stephen (MDSS).
“Residents, communities and their representative MLAs shared concerns about rural cell coverage with the government,” the statement said. “Their concerns, which contradicted reported coverage, triggered the government’s cellular service survey, which in turn, identified service gaps.”
Several departments have teamed up to assist the efforts in addition to FTB, the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DTI), Service New Brunswick (SNB) and the Regional Development Corporation (RDC).
Work on the towers is expected to begin in 2026 and to be completed by mid-2027.
“We continue to work diligently on this file,” Legacy said in the release. “We have a number of additional initiatives already in progress, and are looking forward to sharing more about those soon.”
