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There will be a one-time hookup fee of $400, but once a residence is hooked up to Morenet, there won’t be an ongoing monthly cost.

“The approach we’ve taken is that the city will provide the core infrastructure similar to how we do with other services,” director of planning and engineering Dave Haines said. “If you build a house you would pay for the connection from the house to the water and sewer. For the Internet service, we’ll provide you a point of connection and you install the equipment you need to connect to it and start using it.

“The goal with this is that it stays on the leading edge of what’s available in technology,” Haines said. “That means we’re aiming for a baseline of 100 Mbps, so I don’t think you can find that very easily on the market at a price that most people want to pay.”

The first round of connections are estimated to cost around $250,000. City manager John Scarce said there are a few more things that need to be done, which would come to around an additional $70,000.

Haines said the costs speak for themselves.

“We’ve managed the budget in a way that we could add this on without increasing overall costs,” he said. “What we’ve discovered is the cost to implement the service is low enough that the impact onto the total budget for the community is not significant.”

Scarce said the city looked at places like Fredericton, NB that have rolled out free internet services for sectors of the city.

Scarce said there is work still to be done. The city plans to have residents hooked up by September.