All Nunavik communities will soon get Internet access

AUPALUK — It won’t be long now before Nunavimmiut will be able to log on to the Internet without making costly long-distance calls.

By mid-April, Kuujjuaq’s new satellite communications network should be up and running.

And by the end of the year, Nunavik’s other 13 communities should also have the same type of access to the World Wide Web.

That’s the good news, delivered to members of the Kativik Regional Government council, which met this week in Aupaluk.

The KRG already oversees programs and services to Nunavik’s communities, ranging from employment and training to public works. Through the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and the Kativik Act, the KRG also has the power to regulate communications in Nunavik.

Due to the collapse of every other attempt to link Nunavik to the Internet, the KRG decided to take the lead on this file.

Over the past few months, it’s forged ahead with the project, despite criticism from the Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec and private cable owners that a publicly funded institution, such as the KRG, is stepping into telecommunications delivery.

“The KRG will provide the service,” Gordon Cockbain, the regional government’s director of administration, told the gathering. “But we are doing everything we can to get the private sector involved.”

The KRG plan involves putting up a satellite dish in Kuujjuaq, a project that will cost $300,000. This dish will then connect all the Nunavik organizations in the community, apart from the regional health board, which is already connected to a high-speed provincial health and social service network.

Kuujjuaq’s system will be evaluated and expanded into other Nunavik communities.

“The process of actually hooking up the towns will be relatively simple,” Cockbain said.

Cockbain said the KRG will supply the Internet service to communities only as a last resort. He said efforts will be made to get private sector companies involved.

“There’s no profit in it for the KRG,” Cockbain said. “Let’s hope the private companies pass it on to the public.”

The KRG does have an advantage — it should be able to find $3 million of government money to kickstart the network, the amount needed to cover the installation of the satellite technology everywhere in Nunavik.

The aim is to finally improve telecommunications around Nunavik, so that the public, organizations and businesses can finally have high-speed internet access as well as video conferencing, distance learning, wide-area networks, and e-commerce opportunities.

Cockbain said the new network may even benefit Montreal-based Nunavik organizations, which may decide to share another satellite “gateway” to the system.

Some concern surfaced at the KRG meeting about the telecommunication networks’s reliability in Nunavik’s harsh conditions, but Cockbain assured the councillors that similar satellite-based systems have functioned in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories without undue problems.