Nunavut to widen information highway

MIRIAM DEWAR

From videoconferencing to interactive mapping programs, people in Iqaluit had a chance last week to see what broadband access can offer.

A public presentation and demonstration of broadband connections and applications was held as part of a workshop for broadband providers, community technology leaders, sponsors, and government agencies working to bring the technology to Nunavut.

Its goal was to show what can be done with the technology, and what’s at stake if it isn’t introduced.

The Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation says it hopes to have all 25 communities accessing affordable broadband Internet within the next year.

The not-for-profit NBDC estimates that once it is up and running, the service will cost a home user about $60 a month and small businesses about $100 a month.

Iqaluit residents can already subscribe to a type of broadband access that allows a regular phone line to be used as a high-speed digital connection to the Internet, but it’s not available in other communities.

NBDC president David Smith likened Internet use in Nunavut to a herd of caribou all trying to cross a river at its shallowest point.

“They’re forced to go single file through the river,” Smith said. “And that slows things down.”

Broadband access, which allows information to travel via satellite at a very high speed, is a way of widening the river crossing and allowing the caribou to move side by side. It means Internet users can download vast amounts of information more quickly, making a number of audio-visual applications possible.

Board member Ed Maruyama showed how a Web camera located on top of the building could be moved with clicks of a mouse and images transmitted to a Web site.

The application could work as a surveillance technique, he suggested. It would be possible for a small company in one community to offer monitoring services in another community hundreds of kilometres away because the images are accessible over the Internet.

On another computer Smith demonstrated an online interactive mapping program that allows users to download satellite pictures taken of various places on the planet. Currently this application would be unavailable to most of the territory because it would take too long to download the necessary information from the Internet.

Videoconferencing would also be possible with broadband, meaning rather than having to teleconference with a professor or watch a lecture on videotape, distance education students could watch and interact with a professor based in the south or another community.

The NBDC hopes to show broadband can offer an oral means of communication for non-governmental, non-English speakers as well.

Katarina Soukup of Isuma-Productions, a film company based in Igloolik, demonstrated streaming video over the Internet. A dial-up modem is fine for text-based applications, she said, but when it comes to audio-visual applications, broadband is the way to go.

Nunavut has an oral-based culture, she said. The high speed of a broadband connection means it would be easier for people in different communities to communicate on the Web by seeing and hearing each other, as long as their community has a satellite dish and antennae and the individual user has a broadband modem.

But people will have to wait a while longer for the technology.

Though the NBDC has received some project funding from DIAND, some operational funding from DSD and some initial business plan funding from Industry Canada to prepare for gathering the subsidies and loans for broadband infrastructure, it needs almost $7.5 million to launch the program. Industry Canada has committed $3.88 million pending successful negotiations of the terms.

The group also has proposal letters with loan financing organizations that are under consideration, and it is hoping to get a bandwidth subsidy from the federal Satellite Initiative Program.

The group hopes to sign agreements for infrastructure financing this April as well as with SSI Micro, the vendor that won the right to build system. The next step is to roll out the system in every community from May to December, with agreements signed between SSI Micro and local broadband distributors in every community and conduct the required training.

The NBDC wants all communities up and running with local support by March 2005.