The telecommunications firm plans to spend $210 million in the capital during the next three years to expand and enhance its 4G long-term evolution network in the region, which will bring faster mobile Internet to its subscribers.
Telus also will hire 80 people in 2012 to help support this growth, the firm stated.
"Today's announcement of our strong financial commitment to strengthening the technology platform here speaks to our resolute commitment to our Ottawa-based customers," stated Joe Natale, Telus' chief commercial officer.
The company has more than 640 employees and retirees in the Ottawa area. The new network is expected to support peak download speeds of up to 75 megabits per second, and an average of 12 to 25 megabits per second.
Ottawa's expansion is part of a $650 million province-wide drive to enhance Telus' wireless network. It will make 4G LTE available to more than 95 per cent of Ontario's population, extending it as well to Barrie, Windsor, Muskoka, Kingston and the Niagara area.
Earlier this year, the Huawei-Telus innovation centre for enterprise cloud services opened at Carleton University. Huawei and Telus contributed $1.4 million to the initiative.
The partnership is intended to advance cloud computing through a Carleton lab to a stage to make it more attractive to small- and medium-sized companies. Local students will also have opportunities to work at the firms.
Huawei is also undergoing heavy expansion in the region. The Shenzhen-headquartered company opened its Ottawa R&D centre in 2010 and representatives said in an interview at the time that it will employ 250 there by the end of 2013.
- With files from The Canadian Press
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