Canadian telco Telus has said it will invest more than CA$70 billion (US$50.6bn) to expand and upgrade its network infrastructure and operations over the next five years.

The investment will support sovereign AI data centers in British Columbia and Quebec, plus the expansion of wireless coverage in rural areas, and a focus on reducing GHG emissions.

This network expansion includes the expansion of Telus’ 5G and LTE services to more than 500 macro and micro sites across the country this year.

“The CA$70 billion investment we are making across Canada transcends traditional connectivity; it is powering advanced digital services, fueling innovation across all sectors of the economy, and propelling our productivity as a nation,” said Darren Entwistle, president and CEO of Telus.

“Moreover, this investment is a cornerstone of Canada’s competitiveness on the global stage, driving critical transformational change and advancing our leadership in Canadian AI sovereignty, innovation, and development.”

Telus also said the investment will support the company’s plans to retire its legacy copper network. So far, Telus noted that it has mined more than 4,600 tonnes of copper from its network. This, the company claims, has enabled a reduction of 9,300 tonnes of GHG emissions.

The investment will also support Telus’ fiber build-out, while the carrier has also committed to expanding its coverage to an additional 20 Indigenous lands and 53 rural communities through 2026.

At present, Telus said it connects 637 Indigenous lands and 530 rural communities.

In the next five years, Telus also plans to launch two sovereign AI facilities in Kamloops, British Columbia, and Rimouski, Quebec. Earlier this year, the telco revealed it has partnered with chipset giant Nvidia to deploy the company’s Hopper and Blackwell GPUs at its data center in Quebec by summer 2025.

The company has previously stated that its sovereign AI factory will “leverage its PureFibre network with sustainable data centers powered by 99 percent renewable energy sources to deliver AI as a Service (AIaaS).”

Details about the facility in Kamloops were not disclosed at the time.

Founded in 1990, Telus serves more than ten million mobile subscribers across the country. The carrier also sells fiber broadband and TV subscription services.

Telus’ announcement coincides with its domestic rival Bell Canada’s launch of ‘Bell AI Fabric,’ a plan to help build AI data centers across the country.

The new initiative plans to be ‘nationwide,’ but will start with six data centers in British Columbia, supported by 500MW of hydroelectric power.

The very first facility is set to come online this June, operated by AI inference provider and chip designer Groq. That data center will be a 7MW facility in Kamloops.

Another 7MW data center will open in Merritt, BC, by the end of this year. Two 26MW data centers at planned for Kamloops, with the first opening later this year at Thompson Rivers University (TRU) and a second coming next year. Two other AI data centers with a combined capacity of more than 400MW are also in “advanced planning stages” with stakeholders.