Karen Mackenzie
Northern News Services
Published Monday, January 14, 2008

NUNAVUT - Putting a year of legal and funding woes behind them, the Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation (NBDC) is moving on with its next major phase of development.

The non-profit provider of Qiniq wireless is on the hunt for "project champions," as it attempts to forecast what lies ahead for Internet users across the territory, according to project manager Lorraine Thomas.

"When we first designed this thing four years ago, we had a vision, and it certainly hasn't changed that much," she said. "This new project, which we're calling Infrastructure Phase Two, gives us a chance to say, 'OK, here we are today, where are we going to be in 2011, 2012, 2013?"

What they know already is that both Qiniq and other customers are clamouring for more bandwidth - the amount of information which can be transferred at a given time - to keep up with the increasing number of users and rapidly advancing technology, according to Thomas.

What they hope to discover in the next few months is exactly what Nunavummiut envision the Internet doing for them in the future. Thomas said she'll be approaching what she calls "project champions" in every sector - education, art, business and more - to hear how they would like to use the technology in the future.

The group has already gotten feedback from SAOs, trade shows attendees and particularly the residents of Arctic Bay.

Armed with this road map, Thomas hopes they'll be in a better position to get big funding for costly bandwidth from the federal government.

"If we can get that all together in a document by the end of March we will have hopefully nailed down a huge backer. It's a bit of a crystal ball, but the more specific we can be the better," she said.

Funding for this research plan, which is due Mar. 31, came from both the Department of Economic Development and the federal government last month.

It was five years ago last week that Thomas first began drumming up support for what was then considered by some as a pie-in-the-sky project.

"I had some people telling me e-mail would never catch on," she said with a laugh. "Well, look at it now!"

At that time barely anyone in Nunavut was connected to the Internet.

"Now, more than half the households in the territory are connected," she said. "That, coupled with changes in the Internet in terms of the minimum speed that's required for what people want to do, and the amount of bandwidth each person transfers in a month ... that's the real challenge going forward, finding a fast enough service so people can do what they want to do."

One area desperate for more bandwidth is in the territory's art sector, according to Beth Beattie, executive director of the Nunavut Arts and Crafts Association (NACA).

"It's the highway for the North," Beattie said. "You can't just drive down to Toronto or Ottawa or any city. You can't even drive to a neighbouring town, so the only way for materials to get out is the Internet."

Visual artists in communities from across the territory depend on the Internet to send images of their work to galleries and buyers down south, according to Beattie. NACA also uses it as it creates biographies, videos and exhibition materials.

"Artists in the communities are isolated," Beattie said. "They only have so many people to buy their art, and for galleries to buy from them directly they want to see the piece before they have it shipped out 3,000 miles. I think we need this and we need it now, and (in) 10 years, if we don't have a lot of bandwidth, we're going to be left in the dust."

Education is another key area where work is constantly expanding online, according to Gwen Frankton, co-ordinator of distance education for the Department of Education.

From connecting elders and youth via video conference to workshopping new curricula, the Internet is becoming a cost-effective way to bring people together.

"We're all in our infancy in terms of e-learning here, but we've done a couple course things, and certainly broadband has been a help, and bandwidth has been a challenge," she said. "We're not just dealing with Iqaluit, we're dealing with all the communities so when we've tried to have a video conferencing portion, say, that has proved to be very challenging, and that's the kind of thing you want to be able to do on a regular basis."