Ottawa funding preserves internet for 25 Nunavut communities

SSI Micro’s satellite earth station in Chesterfield Inlet. Thanks to a $35-million contribution from Industry Canada, the company will start offering better internet services throughout Nunavut by March 31, 2016. (PHOTO COURTESY OF SSI MICRO)

Thanks to $35-million in Industry Canada funding over the next five years, Nunavut consumers of SSI Micro’s Qiniq internet service can look forward to better services by March 31, 2016, the company said July 7.

“This is enhancing broadband. We are really quadrupling capacity,” SSI Micro’s chief development officer, Dean Proctor, said in an interview.

Qiniq’s basic offering, now called Atiigiallak, offers Nunavut residents 1.5 Mbps of download speed and 128 kbps of upload for $80 per month, with a monthly usage cap of 10 gigabytes.

By March next year, that basic package — whose brand name may change — will improve to three Mbps of download and 512 kbps of upload, with a 20 Gb usage cap, for the same $80 a month price, Proctor said.

“What we’re excited about is we’ll be bringing in new technology to help deliver this, so we’ll be building up the satellite backbone to make sure the backbone is larger and can support all the new traffic,” he said.

The company’s higher-priced packages will likely get similar improvements in bandwidth — but Proctor said the company needs more time to finalize all its offerings.

He did say that next year’s changes represent a “stepping stone” to bigger and better changes in the future

“This is, we think, a potential launching pad for much greater capacity for a much greater number of services on the ground for the long-term, which we’re really excited about,” Proctor said.

One of those services could be LTE, or 4G wireless service in some of Nunavut’s larger communities, Proctor said.

Nunavut MP Leona Aglukkaq announced the five-year, $35 million contribution July 7 in Arviat.

“This funding under Connecting Canadians will ensure high-speed internet remains available in these regions after 2016, while also greatly improving internet speed for northerners,” Aglukkaq’s July 7 news release said.

That announcement flows from an earlier announcement that Prime Minister Stephen Harper made in Pond Inlet during his northern tour in the summer of 2014.

At that time, Harper and Industry Canada Minister James Moore announced $50 million over five years to subsidize broadband internet in Nunavut and Nunavik.

It’s part of a $305-million program to subsidize internet in rural and remote areas, called Connecting Canadians, that the late finance minister Jim Flaherty announced in his February 2014 budget

The funds, which SSI Micro applied for this past January, will give them the ability to preserve basic satellite internet service in 25 Nunavut communities, at an affordable price, after an existing suite of subsidies expires in 2016.

So it means subsidized internet will continue for people living in all 25 Nunavut communities, representing about 8,600 households.

Various groups once feared that when the old subsidy system, which dates to 2004, expired in 2016, internet service in Nunavut, Nunavik and other rural and remote communities would either collapse or become unaffordable for most people.

In Iqaluit, an unsubsidized service sold by Northwestel offers speeds of up to 5 Mbps, the fastest offering in Nunavut right now, at a cost of $179.95 per month

Outside Iqaluit, Northwestel offers 2.5 Mbps service in a few communities, and, in addition to its basic Atiigiallak package, Qiniq now offers a 2.5 Mbps service, called Atii Pro, for $369.95 a month.

For non-Nunavut residents, Qiniq’s fastest offering jumps to $925 a month.

However, by next March, Qiniq will start selling a new set of improved packages, Proctor said

In 2011, CRTC declared that by the end of 2015, the minimum acceptable internet speed for all Canadians should be five Mbps for downloads and one Mbps for uploads.

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission has set a download speed of 25 Mbps as the minimum definition for broadband.

An announcement of new money for Nunavik’s Tamaani internet service, which received funding from the same programs that supported Qiniq, has yet to be made.