Move over Google Fiber, Bell Canada wants Torontonians to have access to some of the fastest internet speeds available. The company has announced it will spend $1.4 billion to build the largest gigabit infrastructure project in North America.

“It will deliver the best possible online experience, something that quite frankly none of us could have imagined just a few years ago, twenty times faster than today’s marketplace,” George Cope, Bell Canada president and chief executive officer told a news conference on Thursday.

The new Gigabit Fibe service will be the “most incredible transformation of broadband we have ever seen” and allow customers to download a full HD movie in seven seconds, Cope said.

It will be available at first in four Toronto neighbourhoods — Harbourfront, Distillery District, Willowdale and Regent Park, in part because they have many new buildings. It will be ready to roll out to 50,000 consumers this summer with plans to be available to 1.1 million homes and businesses across the city by 2017.

The project, the largest broadband fibre build in North America, will create 2,400 direct jobs in Toronto and 8,000 related jobs. Cope called it Bell’s “largest and most ambitious infrastructure project in 135 years.”

Google has been experimenting with similar high speed projects, as part of its Google Fiber, which started in Kansas City in 2011, but is now available in Provo, Utah and Austin, Texas, with expansion plans for 5 more cities. Bell says it will also launch the product in other cities in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Provinces starting this summer.

Bell's current top end product, Fibe, offers speeds of 50 Megabits per second, so eventually Gigabit Fibe will offer speeds up 20 times that. Initially, service will be at a maximum of 940 Megabits per second, but will rise as modems catch up to the higher speeds.

As for how much it may cost, the company won't say.

"We're not going to be sharing the pricing until the service actually launches. Obviously our competitors are interested in what we want to do, and we don't want to make their job easier," said Rizwan Jamal, Bell's president of residential services.

Mayor John Tory (open John Tory's policard), former CEO of Rogers Communications, Bell Canada’s main rival, hailed the announcement as “hugely important thing for people in the city.” He thanked Bell for investing in Toronto to help ensure it is a world leader in telecommunications.

“It is something that is going to make a big difference to people and to attract investment and jobs,” said Tory, who appeared on stage with Cope at the Design Exchange on Bay Street.

While no public money is involved, Tory said officials at city hall and Toronto Hydro have been acting as “partners” for the last several months to ensure “this happened here.”

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Jamal says that working with Toronto Hydro and using their network of poles throughout the city is how it will be deployed, and where the majority of the jobs will be.

"Working with Toronto Hydro, and between the two of us, we actually think we'll be able to cover 70 per cent using the poles, but the remaining 30 per cent, we'll have to trench to people's homes," said Jamal. "We're happy with those numbers and it allows us to do Toronto in a pretty cost effective way."