SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - After seven years providing people in Yellowknife access to the World Wide Web, the Frostbyte Cafe has gone offline.

The Internet cafe closed in March in part because of the growing number of ways people can get online, said co-owner Marcel Charland.

"The things you could do in our cafe which we used to make money off of, everyone in town started offering it for free or as a service," Charland said.

Charland said Internet service in the area has improved dramatically since the Cafe first opened. It has also become more affordable thanks to packaged deals with cable companies and the invention of tools like the smartphone.

"People can do just about everything from their phones now," he said.

When it was open, the cafe contained 12 computers, as well as video gaming consoles, so customers could compete against each other online.

"Originally when we first opened up we were packed all the time," Charland said adding that in recent years the days remained relatively busy while night traffic dwindled.

Moving to a new location might account for some of the slowdown, Charland said.

Originally located on Franklin Avenue beside Capitol Theatre, the cafe moved out after a flood upstairs in their building, and set up shop on 49 Street.

The theatre provided a lot of traffic in the area, particularly in the evenings, Charland said. By working at a cyber cafe, he said he was able to interact with many different members of the community and also develop a core group of regular customers.

When asked to comment on what the closing of Frostbyte meant to them, fans of the cafe responded, how else, but through the Internet.

Members of an online group dedicated to the cafe expressed disappointment at its closing.

"I loved that place," said Joshua Taylor in an e-mail. "I'm in Inuvik now and sorry to hear of its closing. I know (Charland and his business partner Dustin Moore) put their lives into it to make a go of it."

In his e-mail, Yellowknife's Ian Ziemann called the cafe "a really cool place to go

before it closed down."

Ziemann said he was a frequent visitor to the cafe in its early years but had only been in a couple times leading up to its closing. He will miss being with friends, hanging out and playing games, he said.

Charland said he is ready to move on to the next stage in his life but he won't be moving too far away from the hobby he managed to turn into a full-time job for seven years.

He is currently planning on moving to Ottawa to go back to school and become a computer network technician.

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