Rankin Inlet (May 11/05) - Telesat's newest satellite and a Thompson, Man., company could be beaming high-speed Internet service into the Kivalliq in the near future.

This rocket carried Anik F2 into space in mid-2004 and soon the satellite will enable high-speed residential Internet service around the Kivalliq.

Last summer Telesat, a subsidiary of communications giant of BCE, launched its Anik F2 satellite and started working to make its Xplornet high-speed Internet available throughout Canada.

Xplornet is already being used by businesses in Arviat and Rankin Inlet through Cordell Satellite Systems.

"It works super fast on the downloads," said Bryan Fotheringham, Nunavut area sales manager for Calm Air. "The uploads are slower, but they're a lot faster than with a dial-up connection."

It took about a year to work the bugs out but Bill Cordell, whose company provides the service to the North, said that's to be expected.

"People in the south don't always know how to build things for the North," he said. "We had to do all our own changes."

That included installing a heater so the transmitter stopped freezing up once the temperature dropped below -35C.

The price of the system Cordell's company installed for Calm Air - more than $5,000 for the dish, wireless router and other hardware - was a lot higher than anyone would want to pay for home use. He expects the new residential hardware will cost about 90 per cent less.

"I think it'll be about $500 to get set up and the service will be roughly $50 to $60 a month," he said.

Still in the process of learning about the new service himself, Cordell said he understands Xplornet will allow residential downloads at about one megabyte/second.

Uploads, such as outgoing e-mails, will be slower at about 60 to 100 kilobytes (kbps) per second.

"Even though dial-up says it goes up to 56 kbps, if you log on and it's busy that drops to about one or two kbps," he said.

Cordell said he plans to train a person in each community where he has a client to help with the really technical issues. As well, there's a toll-free support line that he says can help solve minor day-to-day issues.

"We're going to put a real push on in the North and we'll see how it goes," he said. "I'm considering opening an office in Rankin Inlet if we find there's enough demand."