What Alberta SuperNet is, and why it didn't bring fibre home

Alberta SuperNet is the province’s own fibre network. Built from 2001 to 2005, it reaches 429 communities, from the cities to hamlets of a few hundred people. The purple lines on our map are traced from the province’s map of it.

What it cost

The province committed $193 million to build the extended area network to 402 rural communities; Bell built the base network linking the 27 largest. Counting the years of running it, the Auditor General of Alberta reported in 2018 that the government estimates it had spent about $1 billion, and was paying roughly $56 million a year for services and maintenance.

What it was for

SuperNet carries traffic for public buildings: provincial, municipal and Indigenous government offices and other public-sector sites, more than 3,400 of them in 2018. In the Auditor General’s words, “the SuperNet is not the Internet.” Internet providers can buy capacity on it to reach rural customers (what wholesale means), but it was never built to run fibre to homes.

Where that leaves homes

The last stretch, from a town’s SuperNet connection to each house, was left to private providers. In towns and cities that has mostly happened: almost every home in Alberta’s population centres can now get gigabit service, over fibre or cable. Outside them, only about one household in five can (18.7%, our calculation from CRTC data, 2025). Even in a city, fibre to the home isn’t certain: a planned fibre build in Medicine Hat was deferred in August 2026.

In our view

In our view, Alberta paid for fibre to the edge of nearly every community and stopped there. A municipality can finish the job: own the last stretch to homes and run it as open access, so any provider can sell over it. Using what’s already in the ground costs far less than building it again, and keeps the network under local control. A local exchange could be one more use. What Medicine Hat already has.