For this reason, Fredericton is one of the few Atlantic Canadian cities that has actually reported a population increase in recent years.
The city has been investing actively in IT infrastructure. The City of Fredericton was recently the winner of the "Judges Innovation Award" at the 2004 Canadian Information Productivity Awards due to their "Fred-eZone" free municipality wide WiFi network initiative. This and other innovations by the city's Telco, e-Notations, led Intel to do a case study on their successes. Fred-ozone spans much of the city’s downtown and parts of surrounding residential areas, as well as peripheral commercial areas such as Fredericton's Regent Mall.
The Intelligent Community Forum (a New York City based think tank) selected Fredericton as a 2008 and a 2009 Top 7 Intelligent Community based partly on the City's work in the IT sector.
Recently, the New Brunswick government has been seeking to attract more immigrants to the province (and consequently the Fredericton area) to increase the labour force and compensate for an aging population.
The Greater Fredericton Region has also established an investment attraction program called Invest Greater Fredericton. The purpose is to provide investors and site selectors with one central source for economic information such as real estate, demographics, key industries and more
