Ottawa promise may bring high-speed Internet to Nunavut

IQALUIT — There may be some relief in sight for Nunavut Internet users grown tired of watching web pages crawl onto their computer screens through sluggish copper phone wires connected to equally sluggish — but ruinously expensive — satellite bandwidth providers.

That’s because the federal government wants to take Canadians on an expensive ride into a dreamy high-tech future — high-speed digital communications available to all, no matter where they live.

Ottawa’s new commitment, first announced last October, is to connect all of Canada to broadband, high-speed Internet services by 2004.

“We must ensure that all Canadian communities, no matter where they are, can reap the benefits of broadband Internet services,” Industry Minister Brian Tobin said January 11.

On that day, Tobin appointed a 35-person advisory group to help the government achieve its ambitious goal. Called the National Broadband Task Force, they’re supposed to provide Tobin with a report this spring.

For Ken O’Neill, the Nunavut Department of Finance and Administration’s chief informatics officer, the biggest issue the task force must look at is the prohibitive cost of satellite data transmission.

Unlike any other region of Canada, Nunavut gets all of its telephone, cable television and Internet services through satellite transmissions.

“It’s a really simple thing and we have to get that across,” O’Neill said.

“In my perspective, what the working group’s got to do is realize that 100 per cent of our business model is based on satellite. It’s not like it’s 5 per cent of our population that needs it, it’s not like it’s a corner of our territory that needs it. Our business model is 100-per-cent satellite. It’s everything we do.”

Marcel Mason, the network administrator at Iqaluit’s Nunanet Worldwide Communications, says that’s why his customers must pay more than residents of large urban centres in the South, for much less bandwidth.

“Down South you see the high-speed access because there’s fibre-optic strung from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ and there’s microwave towers all over the place. Its cheap and economical,” Mason said.

“We don’t have that alternative here. I generally use the analogy that there are people in the South with more bandwidth coming into their homes than the town of Iqaluit.”

Like other Internet service providers, or “ISPs,” in Nunavut, Mason’s company buys bandwidth from a satellite provider and then resells it to dial-up customers.

Nunanet can afford to offer low-speed dial-up access to Iqaluit residents, but not to people who live in smaller Baffin communities.

“If cost were not an issue we would have very high speed connections, video conferencing, voice,” Mason said. “If cost were not a major factor, we would immediately set up shop in six or eight of the regional communities.”

Satellite costs headed skyward

But there’s no sign that satellite services are getting any cheaper.

Greg Fandrick, the general manager of Ardicom Digital Communications, says the cost of satellite time is likely on the rise, even when Telesat Canada’s new high-capacity satellite, the Anik F-1, becomes available.

“In the North, the barrier to entry is what we pay for bandwidth,” Fandrick said. “The one causal hump is the availability of satellite bandwidth. It’s still limited today.”

Telesat launched the F-1 satellite last October. In 2002, they’re planning to launch another one, the F-2, which the company says will be dedicated to “two-way, last-mile, high-speed digital connections to off-net users throughout North America.”

But can Nunavut service providers afford to pay for this additional satellite bandwidth?

Mark Hickey, Northwestel’s vice-president for Nunavut, said satellite companies like Telesat need to charge large amounts of money to recoup the billions of dollars they spend to develop and launch their spacecraft.

“While satellite time has improved, the cost has gone up,” Hickey said.

“In the South they have a fibre that runs from Toronto to Vancouver, all of their traffic can go on the same fibre and there’s very little incremental cost. In our circumstance, if the demand for bandwidth grows, we have to go out and lease more bandwidth from Telesat and then that adds to our costs.”

Getting business, government together

So will Arctic Canada ever cease to be a have-not region in the provision of high-speed digital communications?

Greg Fandrick says it’s likely that only long-term collaboration between business and government can accomplish that goal.

“We need an ongoing multi-year partnership with the federal government to deliver these services,” Fandrick said.

Fandrick said that means more than one-time-only cash handouts, offered within Industry Canada’s current array of programs, such as its well-known “CAP,” or Community Access Program.

“The last thing we need is, ‘Here’s your $100,000, go build your high-speed connection,’ because you can get all the experts in the world to set up your ISP, but two years later you can’t afford the bandwidth.”

Next, Fandrick said, Ottawa must recognize that what works for southern Canada doesn’t necessarily work in the North and that the North’s lack of representation on Ottawa’s broadband task force is a serious issue.

“We’re a have-not. Where is the North’s representation in general as a have-not group? This is obviously a big deal. It’s huge. But are we really going to have the opportunity to present a case as a have-not and deserving of this technology?”

But despite its limitations, he says Ardicom has proven that government and business can work together.

Ardicom is a partnership made up of Arctic Co-ops Ltd., an aboriginal consortium called Nasco, and Northwestel. In 1997, Ardicom won a GNWT contract to set up a digital communications network in the territories in partnership with territorial governments.

“If Ardicom has done anything in the past five years, it is that we have proven that the public-private model, where the government is a cornerstone customer, does accomplish goals. I don’t think anyone can look at the Ardicom experiment and say it was a failure. We accomplished what we set out to do,” Fandrick said.

GN to set up own task force

Two weeks ago, the government of Nunavut announced that it will create its own “broadband task force” to mirror the work of Ottawa’s group. The territorial government is expected to soon announce who will serve on the group and what they will be asked to do.

Meanwhile, Ken O’Neill, who helped oversee the installation of the Nunavut government’s computer network, agrees that private businesses should do the work, in partnership with government.

“Let industry provide the service. Maybe it will be Ardicom again. Maybe it will be a new Ardicom that will get formed. But we have to make sure that it’s business that does it, not government,” O’Neill said.

Marcel Mason of Nunanet also believes that’s the best way to provide services to Nunavut communities, many of which don’t even have low-speed Internet access.

“If the government were to go into the communities, it should be in conjunction with the existing regional ISPs in a partnership that would see the government either purchasing bandwidth from the regional ISPs out of the communities or sharing bandwidth with the regional ISPs, as an anchor tenant as it were. That would be a major thing if that were to happen,” Mason said.

Iqaluit’s Adamie Itorcheak, the president of Nunanet Worldwide Communications, is a member of Ottawa’s broad band task force.

But Brian Tobin named no other northern or Nunavut residents to serve on the body, even though a large part of its mandate is to look at barriers to service in remote regions of Canada.

Its membership list reads like a Canadian high-tech who’s-who. The CEOs of companies like Nortel, Telesat Canada, Bell Canada, Telus, Rogers Cable and IBM Canada all sit on the task force.