BEFORE DELVING INTO the backbone issues, what is current the state of broadband in the Far North? What levels of service are currently available? According to Northwestel’s COO Curtis Shaw, residential customers in the western part of the North can purchase a 125 Mbps service while businesses can get 150 Mbps over the regions where it offers a DOCSIS 3.0 network on its hybrid-fibre-coax cable plant.
By the end of this year, however, Northwestel will be able to offer all 59 communities in the western arctic region a minimum 15/1 Mbps service. “We've done 51 communities to date, we've got eight remaining this year. And we're doing a number of rural subdivisions as part of this as well,” he told Cartt.ca in an interview earlier this year. (Ed note: Northwestel has since been in touch to let us know that Shaw meant that to mean the service mentioned above is to all 59 terrestrially served communities.)
Northwestel has beefed up its Internet packages in the last number of months. Earlier this summer, the company upgraded its old Internet 16 and Business Internet 16 packages. Now residential customers can get a 20/3 Mbps service with 150 GB of usage for $79.95 per month. On the business side, the service is now at 40/4 Mbps with 200 GB of capacity for $209.95 per month.
The company also offers a satellite based broadband service with 5 Mbps upload and 512 kbps down using C-band capacity. “The key constraint here is the availability and price of satellite bandwidth. Today really we can't go with C-band technology to really do anything past five megs and keep it affordable,” added Shaw. He noted that there are four communities in Nunavut, eight in the Northwest Territories, one in the Yukon and another one in northern British Columbia receiving broadband this way.
The situation isn’t as good in Nunavut where average speeds are 1.5 Mbps down and 384 kbps up for $80 per month, according to figures from the Nunavut Broadband Development Corp. SSi Micro, the sole ISP to offer service to all of Nunavut’s 25 communities has a 3/1.5 Mbps service over its Qiniq network.
The Qiniq network was original deployed using 2.5 GHz fixed wireless spectrum (think Inukshuk Internet from the previous decade) but now SSi Micro is migrating the network to 4G mobile broadband technology. As the new 4G technology is rolled out into communities, the older service will be retired.
Xplornet Communications is another player in the Far North with satellite based technology. The company offers service in a number of Nunavut communities.
The largely slower speeds available to Northerners results from the lack of transport capacity, but there is work to 
improve the situation using fibre and satellite technologies ongoing. As was noted in Part I of our series on serving the far north, Northwestel is going to use a $50 million funding award from the federal government to build a satellite backhaul network that will improve service to communities in Nunavut. There is work underway to improve fibre transport redundancy in the Territories, too.
Shaw explained that there are approximately 2,500 kms of a single thread of fibre running from Dawson City all the way down to Edmonton. Because it's a single line and is susceptible to disruptions, Northwestel has plans to address that. The first comes from the Mackenzie Valley Fibre Link, a single strand running along the Mackenzie River from Fort Simpson all the way to Inuvik. Its owned by the Northwest Territories government but operated by Northwestel.
The other is the Canada North Fibre Loop which would be deployed in the Great Slave Lake Area, connecting Yellowknife to Fort Resolution across the southern part of the Northwest Territories. This would complete a much needed fibre ring in the Far North. The cost for this project is estimated to range from $20 million to $25 million, but it has yet to receive the go ahead.
"So by putting this ring in, if there's a cut anywhere in the ring, the traffic can go in the other direction. So that's been one of the things we've been looking at. It's a pretty big project. It requires government participation, requires federal government participation," said Shaw.
There is another fibre link under consideration that would be deployed in the Great Slave Lake area, connecting Yellowknife to Fort Resolution, across the southern part of the Northwest Territories with fibre cable sunk in the Lake itself. The cost for this project is estimated to range from $20 million to $25 million, but it has yet to receive the go ahead.
Look for Part III of this special feature coming Thursday. Part I can be read here.
With files from Greg O'Brien
