The Federal Government announced it will upgrade the $2.9 billion North American rail line that runs from Montreal to Los Angeles with a new HSTF fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) system.

The Government said in a statement that the upgrade will increase capacity on the North American line from 30,000 to 70,000 bps, a “significant improvement”.BNSF says the upgrade, which was originally scheduled to begin in 2019, will allow the company to deliver an upgrade to its existing line by the end of 2020.

The upgrade will provide BNSFERries high-speed fibre-optic network to the United States, Canada and Mexico, which will allow for faster, higher capacity connections to the West Coast, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

The company says it expects the upgrade to be completed by the middle of 2021.