Ottawa is an established centre of excellence

Today, 90% of Canada’s industrial telecommunications research takes place in Ottawa making us a global leader in developing the future of communication networks. Here you will find North America’s only pure play optical fabrication centre and several other government labs at the forefront of telecom research, including the Communications Research Centre (CRC), the Canadian Space Agency’s David Florida Laboratory, and the Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC).
These R&D centres play a crucial role in complementing commercially deployable research to locally-based companies like Blackberry’s QNX, Nokia, Cisco, and Ciena which invest in R&D, grow the talent pool, and attract investment.
Why Ottawa is the ideal location for communications technology leaders:
- Ottawa has the highest concentration of tech talent (as a percentage of a city’s total employment) in North America at 11.6 percent – ahead of San Francisco at 10.9 percent. (CBRE Tech Talent 2021)
- Home to 65 federal research labs, including the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre
- Home to Area X.O, the first integrated V2X test facility of its kind in North America
- Ottawa receives the highest percentage of federal R&D expenditures in science and technology