Ottawa commits $86M to raise Nunavut internet speeds
Northwestel teaming up with Telesat to bring high-speed internet to all 25 communities by 2029
Inuktitut translator Cindy Rennie, right, speaks for Tammy April, Norwestel vice-president of strategic growth, during the announcement of an $86-million federal spending plan for Nunavut’s telecommunications infrastructure. The project will lead to dozens of jobs for cable splicers and Inuktitut call centre workers, April said. (Photo by Daron Letts)
Internet speeds across Nunavut will be raised to levels already in place across most of Canada within three years, says Buckley Belanger, the secretary of state for rural development.
Belanger announced a federal government plan to spend $86 million over three years to improve the territory’s telecommunications infrastructure, in Iqaluit on Thursday.
“All 25 communities will be receiving high-speed internet that’s 50-10,” Belanger said during the announcement at Nunavut Arctic College.
That means 11,650 Nunavut households, as well as businesses and institutional offices, will get access to unlimited internet data and speeds of at least 50 megabits per second for downloads, and 10 megabits per second for uploads by 2029.
Currently, Northwestel offers residential internet speeds of 15 megabits per second for downloads and two megabits per second for uploads. That’s for customers in Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, Cambridge Bay and Arviat and comes with a 300 gigabyte monthly data limit.
Nunavut’s telecom project will be funded through the federal government’s $3.225-billion Universal Broadband Fund, designed to bring high-speed internet to the entire country including rural and remote areas by 2030.
Northwestel is partnering with Telesat — a former Crown corporation that now operates as a Canadian-controlled publicly traded company — to upgrade the infrastructure on the ground and in the sky, with federal support.
Preparation for infrastructure upgrades is already underway, with Northwestel planning to connect fibre cable that’s necessary for high-speed internet to all homes in every community. It will also add receiving stations at each of Northwestel’s community offices.
Northwestel plans to start work after the 2027 sealift, said Tammy April, vice-president of strategic growth, in an interview.
“We’ll have Telesat equipment on our central offices in each of the communities,” she said. “There will be a big dish or sometimes multiple dishes on the roof of our buildings.
“We’ll be running fibre optic cable to people’s homes. Our goal is to hit about half of the homes in Nunavut next year.”
She said the company will train and hire cable-splicers needed in every community in 2027. Later, Inuktitut call centre workers and service technicians will also be hired.
As for the cost of faster internet, April said she anticipates the price will be around $110 per month for households.
Meanwhile, Telesat is working with MDA Space Ltd., which it contracted to manufacture a constellation of 156 low-Earth orbit satellites at its factory in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Que.
The first two test satellites are expected to launch within six months, said Andrew Lockhart, Telesat’s director of government relations and public affairs.
“With this new low-Earth orbit system, we’ll be able to provide much quicker, basically fibre-like speeds from space,” Lockhart said.
The satellites are about the size of a commercial freezer and weigh 800 kilograms.
By 2027, the company forecasts launching a few satellites every three weeks until they’re all in space and operational by early 2028.
They do know that almost all people including the ones on welfare all have Starlink right? So they want us on their services for what$110 when we all know it’s going to be $250-300 a month? It’s cheaper to have a unlimited data phone to use its hotspot then going to WASTel
I switched to STARLINK , best investment ever.
Ms. Rennie is acting as an interpreter in this photo. Translation is written, interpretation is spoken.
Why??
Same old, waste of money following to northwestel!!! Same old BS!!! Enough of enough!!!
What an astronomical waste of money – when Starlink is already up and running and provides exceptional service. Just terrible waste of tax payer funds. Again.
Totally stuck in the past, it’s pathetic
They found money laying around , so they decided to waste it .
Hasn’t this been done before?
Couldn’t they buy a starlink receiver for every single household and business in Nunavut for a fraction of that price?
An absolute waste of taxpayer money.
Starlink is by far the superior product and NWTEL will not come close in NU. Telesat is also horrendus to the point where Federal offices use Starlink for most things but have to use Telesat for “secure” items and Telesat when you have to use it is abysmal, you want to jump back to Starlink as fast as possible after having to do anything via Telesat.
Is redundancy a bad thing though, no. But large scale competitors are starting to put far more satellites up, for instance, Amazon.
Why are we going to compete or try to make a product / service compete with two of the largest companies in the world all at the expense of the tax payer. Amazons service is expected to hit Canada mid-late 2026.
We have already seen the type of service NWTEL offers in NU. They put nearly zero dollars into upkeep as their infrastructure just fell apart. Its impossible to get timely repairs and they just continually re-route you back to some call centre.
Some olds hats just need to go.
In 2024 Telesat received a government loan of over 2 billion dollars for high-speed internet and here we are pouring more money into their tech which never seems to come to fruition. WHo would leave starlink in the north for these bozos?
Seems like Carney’s just giving his personal friend a lot of loans to keep his company afloat. Telesat CEO Dan Goldberg and Mark Carney are close personal friends.
Endless money-pit for the rich elitists with Trump Jr in the PM office.
Guess nobody in the comments section understands “buy Canadian” or the issues surrounding supporting American companies like Elon Musk Starlink. They only say “buy Inuit-owned” but the truth is that “Inuit-owned” is usually not what it means either lol
Look, I hate NWTel. Their horrible customer service, unreliable service, “mandatory phone line”, gaslighting, blaming customers for their issues, expensive overage costs, etc. all reasons why me and many others in Nunavut were more than happy to ditch them for Starlink as soon as something remotely better came along. That being said, having this service will still be a benefit to residents. Many people live in apartments where Starlink cannot be installed. I think Qiniq is the best option if you are a light internet user and looking for a good price (Qiniq is also powered by Starlink now), while Bell/Telus/NWTel is the better option if you need faster speeds or higher usage. Having a more affordable option with faster speeds and unlimited data will be very welcome to these users, who cannot install a dish. The fact that Telesat is Canadian also is good from a federal security perspective. I hope other companies besides NWTel can offer services in Nunavut using this Telesat system, like Qiniq, InukNet, Ice Wireless, and other, future companies. Having competition is good and should make for better services from all providers. Personally, after suffering with NWTel’s service for so many years, even if it was a cheaper and better product I’d still stick with Starlink, but by the looks of this article, it looks like Starlink has nothing to worry about. No interest returning to a company that fleeced their users, and is relying on tax money to improve their service rather than invest their own profits, but this will provide better internet to more users and help with competition and provide redundancy, which is a good thing.
I am also a starlink user, but here’s my worry. Knowing Canadian oligopolies, you can bet that it’s likely that our government will start getting lobbied to give them some sort of competitive advantage over starlink. Be it licensing fees, taxes or outright regulation. The end result when governments regulate is the same: limited choice and higher cost. Think about it. All this investment needs a business case. I hope I’m wrong.
Starlink is great and a game changer, no argument there. But it can be politicized and turned off for Canada at the flip of a switch by an egomaniacal a$$hat. If everyone adopts Starlink and absolute reliance is built on it, what happens when it disappears? The satellites are also saturating the sky and obstructing light and causing other physical interference. The latest Artemis II mission launch had 150 specific “no-go” periods within the launch window due to all the satellites whizzing by now. There will be a capacity limit hit at some point.
There needs to be redundancy be it wireless or fibre to all communities. Relying solely on Starlink for high-capacity high-speed connectivity is foolish.
10 years too late.
Although it’ll be good to have an alternative to Elon’s service.
He’s known to just shut down country’s internet in war time.
50/10 can not be considered high speed in todays world. Not even close.
And yes I use Starlink and would love to use a Canadian alternative but I don’t think NWTEL is the best choice due to their track record. I also agree that depending on Starlink is not a great idea due to the sole source dependence and the political nature of this service. Costly fibre optics may be the best but even it can be subject to natural and human caused events.
50-10 meh. Run a real fiber or something. I get like 3 times that on my Starlink.
No. I like the Internet, but Mark and John, you have your priorities wrong.
Nunavut’s priority crisises are:
Housing – we have several thousand Nunavummiut who are homeless.
Addictions – most Nunavummiut live without hope and are addicted to more than one of: tobacco, coffee, canabis, gambling, alcohol, hard drugs, video games, live streaming, or organized religion.
Inept management – for 25 years the GN has failed to build an economy in Nunavut that offers inclusion for all Nunavummiut.
Inadequate food and inadequate education – stemming from the three issues mentioned above.
Mark and John, get our priorities straight. Making money available to the businesses owned/managed by your friends is not our priority.
Starlink consists of a low earth orbit satellite network of hundreds of small satellites.
The position over the earth of each satellite is fixed. Therefore, the more users you have underneath several satellites will create congestion.
This is not a theoretical problem. Starlink is already charging a $100-$250 congestion fee to new users in selected parts of Canada.
People in Nunavut that are singing the praises of Starlink today have to realize that its very popularity will degrade the quality of service.
Furthermore, Starlink service has already been manipulated based on politics. It is a risk to Canada to have our communications at the whim of a goofball like Elon Musk.
Qiniq, Northwestel DSL, Bell Satellite Internet, all these services and more throughout Nunavut’s short history have had their honeymoon phase with customers until usage bogged down the download and upload rates on these networks.
There is no doubt that in a few years, Starlink users especially at regional centers will be complaining about the quality of service based on the architectural constraints of this system.
Bring on Telsat. Bring on Northwestel. It is not one or the other. The real answer is all of the above.
You must be new here.
Telesat and NWTel tagteamed to keep competition out of the north and keep us dependant on paying the highest costs for the worst service while sucking up endless dumps of federal subsidies. There is no reason for anyone to send tax dollars to NWTel anymore. Their infrastructure is old and outdated and their Nunavut operations are a sinkhole. They have nothing left to offer the North. While majority American owned Telesat has potential military benefits for Canada, NWTel should just be allowed to die. We don’t owe anything to those who held us hostage for so long.