New company plans for faster internet in Nunavut
Inuknet looking to provide faster internet for territory’s businesses and organizations
Inuknet Communications Inc. is a partnership between Qikiqtaaluk Corp.-owned Panarctic Communications and Galaxy Broadband Communications. The new company aims to provide faster internet to businesses and organizations through low-earth orbit satellite internet. (Photo by David Lochead)
An Inuit-owned telecom company introduced itself to Nunavut on Thursday.
“We are excited about the opportunity that this partnership will bring to Nunavut,” said Harry Flaherty, president and chief executive officer of Qikiqtaaluk Corp.
Inuknet Commmunications Inc. is an internet service provider aiming to be the leader of telecommunications services in the North.
Its goal is to use low-earth orbit satellites to provide faster and more reliable internet for businesses and organizations in Nunavut’s 25 communities.
The company is formed by Panarctic Communications, which is owned by Qikiqtaaluk Corp., and Galaxy Broadband Communications.
“This, to us, is a perfect marriage,” said Rick Hodgkinson, president and chief executive officer of Galaxy Broadband.
Flaherty emphasized this will be a cloud-based internet service, meaning it’s a service that stores data on internet servers instead of a hard drive.
Inuknet is hoping to be ready by Sept. 30 in all 25 communities, Hodgkinson said.
Doug Harvey, the vice-president of business development and marketing at Galaxy Broadband, said Inuknet is looking at plans that will offer 50 megabits per second per download and 10 megabits per second upload speed, which is the federal government’s standard for high-speed internet.
Another plan the company is looking at is a package of 100 mbps per download by 20 mbps per upload.
The starting price for a package will be $890 a month, Harvey said.
The reason Inuknet will keep to business offerings and not residential internet is because satellite technology is not yet at a point where it can deliver the high-speed standard and low latency at an affordable price.
“It’s not quite there,” Hodgkinson said.
The company is using low-earth orbit technology because, according to Flaherty, the territory needs to look at the solutions that are already available for faster internet, instead of waiting for fibre-optic internet.
“You hear that fibre-optic internet is the answer for everything,” he said.
“Well, I could just say that we don’t have fibre-optic [internet]. You probably aren’t going to see it [here] in five years. Probably not going to see it in 10 years.”
The key, Flaherty said, is to use low-earth orbit satellites as the foundation for higher-speed internet, and then “go beyond.”
Interesting, but might be a tad late. Begs the question, why would anyone take the $900 Inuknet over the $140 starlink?
For commercial only, I’d say that’s a great price for businesses! Someday in the future, they may have residential services for ‘anyone’ — just not now.
It’s for business. Starlink business users pay more than residential as well. (although idk if it’s $800/mo)
Starlink has already accomplished this, why sink more money into something that’s currently being done? Also One-Web is currently doing this as well. (i understand the money would go to an inuit organization)
Why not put money into bringing an actual fibre line into the territory. It seems everyone is trying to avoid this and take the easier “unproven” way out. We still don’t have the consistency from starlink but they’re willing to sell the same “unproven” service to businesses? Another shortcut that leads to more nonsensical spending.
Competition? Redundancy?
Is your investment account diversified?
just to clarify i believe one web is where inuknet is getting their internet, Galaxy broadband signed with them a little while ago.
Starlink offers 50-200 Mbps at $147.00 (residential) and $500 (business) monthly.
This proposed internet will match the speed as Starlink or even slower for almost double the price. Why would a business owner go for the expensive option? Perhaps if they guarantee a constant uptime with no lag spikes?
DSL will do for now till the fiber comes in ?
$890.00 a month for businesses? I think SSI will do for now. Although Starlink is providing residential at $147.00 a month, wait til blizzard kicks in, will the small dishes be able to withstand the strong winds?
Also Starlink dish has heating to melt the snow and ice, if heating stays too long, wires could burn out. If you turn off snow melt, dish can be covered with snow or ice and it will shut off internet and take hours to melt it before you get internet again.
I had snow melt off all winter and it was fine. It isn’t designed to be on all the time.
As of today, $199 for the Starlink hardware.
anything made and sold in nunavut is allways a Rip off and will allways cost too much and not enough gig, allways. Dont even try lol rip off
Just Rebrand it,call it inuk something or whatever and Go get people money in theres pocket ?
Waste of money…galaxybroadband and old sat compnaies do not have the technology that is in play such as starlink..not in a million years would i invest into such a stupid decision…these companies are trying to get bailout from the feds because there stuff is worthless…good luck with the crappy tech…IT master for 30 years I’ve done galaxybroadband and its brutal…
What we need is fibre, satellite has its limitations and life span is short compared to fibre.
About 500 kilometres away from Iqaluit there is fibre we can connect to.
With Nunavik planning to connect to fibre it would make better sense to partner with them and start connecting southern Baffin to fibre, Kivalliq is working of getting fibre also.
Starlink is the way to go only going to get better now with the tesla Pi phone it will be the best and awesome anywhere on the land – anywhere there are no cell towers
Let’s look at this with a bit of logic. We have been using Northwestel or SSI respectively with 55-200GB data caps at slow speeds.
For a business / enterprise you don’t even need Starlinks business package. You can use the residential 1,000gb package and have vastly more data than you did before (its still unlimited after the 1,000 as well) at significantly faster speeds for 147 a month. The residential package has worked just fine and will work just fine for 99% of businesses here in Nunavut due to them being much smaller in size.
For the GN’s larger non-sat offices, aka Iqaluit basically a commercial option might make sense but even then Starlink is still cheaper.
Not only that is it really a commercial solution if its not low latency? What’s the point? The low latency is the key, not overpriced data compared to the current competitor.
Until there’s fibre here Starlink has the first mover advantage. Amazon is also scheduled to start getting into LEO’s, they fin, it makes ally released an update not long ago.
Why is QC trying to compete with two of the world’s wealthiest individuals? Work on getting a fibre into Nunavut. A long term, real solution.
Guess they want subsidy money the fed gov.