Dave Martin
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 18/98) - Most people consider the advent of the computer age to be the advent of the "information age."

After all, there's so much information out there to be had on virtually any subject. One thing that many people take for granted, however, is the need for a communications pipeline to get linked to the information highway.

In Yellowknife, for instance, many think nothing of dialing the telephone to connect to an Internet service provider. But that's not usually the case for other more remote communities in the North.

But now, thanks to the help of SSIMicro, several communities in the Kitikmeot region have recently joined the information age. Kirby Marshall, sales manager for SSIMicro, described the venture his company participated in.

"There are a lot communities out there that said, 'We need it, we want it,'" says Marshall. "And the Kitikmeot region approached us. It's been about a year and a half from network design to finishing the project. And, as of last week it's all up and running."

"We put in five earth stations -- big satellite dishes in the Kitikmeot region. So now there is high-speed digital communications in five communities in the Kitikmeot. They can do Internet, and I don't mean just surfing, but communications between different points Internet phones and voice-over-data communications.

"The network is not just a pipe to the edge of the communities, part of it was also high-speed wireless within the communities, and also providing dial-in access setting up an ISP (Internet service provider) in each community."

That's not saying that SSIMicro is running and managing the systems, far from it, in fact.

"We provided the hardware, helped them install it, and provided training support," says Kirby. "Now there are local ISPs, Inuit-owned and run and maintained, in the five communities."

"You have to give credit where credit is due, and the Kitikmeot Corporation took the initiative and said, 'We want high-speed communications.' The local development corporation has done just a wonderful job. They have their act together in the East they know what they want and they're going after it."

Bringing the North online is something that excites Kirby, but as much for the cultural impacts as for any business advantage his company gains. He sees it as a great opportunity for the aboriginal peoples to expose their cultures to other parts of the world.

As Kirby explains it, "They're recognizing that and embracing that they're going gangbusters with it."

The social aspects of improved communications is the other side of the same coin that excites Marshall. "There are old people in Taloyoak who have never been out of their community and have never talked to their grandchildren in Kugluktuk. They're going to be able to do that quite soon, and I'm just dying to be there when stuff like that happens to see the look on their faces."

"We are, here in the North, in the last frontier. Communications in the North is probably the last frontier in North America. A lot of the things they take for granted in the South have been a longtime coming in the North. But it's moving a thousand times faster up here than it is in the South.

"There's going to be an absolute revolution in communications and it's not going to be 20 years from now it's going to be a few years from now," says Kirby.

"There's going to be a huge jump in the availability of bandwidth to the average user. One of the big things pushing that are the low-earth satellites that Bill Gates and others are involved in. Voice and video communications use a lot of bandwidth, and that's the thing that's holding us back.

"It took years and years and years for us in the larger communities to get where we are today. There are so many communities still today that barely have telephone service. They're going to go, literally within a year, from a telephone to being fully connected just like anywhere else. The possibilities, for the people in those communities who've experienced so little, are going to be just remarkable."