Nunavik awaits better, cheaper cell phones

KUUJJUAQ – Nunavik residents who want to chat to each other on cell phones will have to wait a while – until cellular technology improves, and its cost drops.

“We’re not saying ‘no’,” said Joë Lance, who heads the Kativik Regional Government’s administrative department and its Tamaani internet service provider. “We’re just prioritizing our need for more bandwidth right now.”

A KRG evaluation of what it would cost Nunavik to implement cellular technology throughout the region produced a $5 million figure – much too high a price, given cellular technology’s current limitations, Lance said.

There are two competing technologies used by cellular telephone providers: Bell Canada and Rogers use CDMA, short for “Code-Division Multiple Access,” a digital cellular technology, while Telus and Fido rely on GSM, short for “Global System for Mobile Communications.”

If cell phone users from the South wanted to use their phones in Nunavik, a regional system would only be able to satisfy about half of these users, Lance said, because Nunavik would have to opt for one cellular technology system or the other.

Nunavimmiut who are eager to use cell phones as replacements for more costly satellite phones or cumbersome radios out on the land would be disappointed, too, because the range of cell phones in the region would only extend to about 10 or 15 kilometres from each village.

Lance said if the KRG ever decides to get into the cellular market, it will bring cellular technology to every village in Nunavik.

Bringing cell phones only to Kuujjuaq, the region’s largest community, might be a money-maker now, but to Lance’s knowledge, no private sector business has ever expressed any interest in such a venture.

Another disincentive is that land-based telephone lines in Nunavik cost the same price as in southern Quebec, and clients in Nunavik have access to the same low-cost packages as those in the South.

For the time being, Nunavik’s network of community radios, which transmit messages in every village, is seen as a cheaper and more efficient way of local communication.

The KRG executive, nevertheless, wants to see a market analysis for cell phones to gauge exactly what the market for cell phones in Nunavik could be.

“But for now we’re saying this is too expensive, and we don’t have the bandwidth,” Lance said.

This month, Tamaani is sending its application to the National Satellite Initiative, a federal program to subsidize satellite costs for remote regions, and asking, in collaboration with other groups in Ontario and Manitoba, for three times the amount of bandwidth.