Grise Fiord (Sep 13/04) - Using pre-paid Internet cards with a slow connection rate, it used to take Amon Akeeagok more than a minute to e-mail pictures.

A $30 card provided about 10 hours of surfing with a 12-kilobyte-per-second connection rate, estimates Akeeagok.

Lite High-speed connections usually download at a rate of 128 kb/s.

Along with his son, who likes to download music, Akeeagok would go through at least two cards a month.

Then Sympatico dial-up Internet was introduced to the community in June.

The new service connects at about 53 kb/s and includes 100 hours for $24.95 a month -- it has also switched to a local dial-up number instead of the previous long distance call.

"It's a lot faster, that's for sure," said Akeeagok. Ray Richer, the general manager of the Northern Store, said he received about 25 software packages for the service, all of which have been distributed.

"I'm very pleased with the service. Even down south, there are some places that aren't this fast," he said. "It's taking a fraction of the time to download pictures."

Richer used to head over to the school in the evenings to use the Internet, calling the pre-paid cards, "more of a pain than anything else."

Now, he just flips on his home computer.

Neither Akeeagok nor Richer have experienced any problems with the new service.