Brodie Thomas
Northern News Services
Published Monday, June 9, 2008

TUKTOYAKTUK - Subscribers to SSI Micro's wireless Airware Internet service in Tuktoyaktuk say they've been waiting since January for the service to be fixed.

Dorothy Loreen bought the wireless Internet as a Christmas gift for her family. She said at first it worked great. But then a blizzard in early January knocked out service for the entire community. It still has yet to be fixed.

"I was just ticked when I heard Ryan Walker (of SSI Micro) talking on the radio about getting cell phone service for Tuk," said Loreen. "I don't know what they're trying to get cell for when they can't even fix the Internet."

Loreen said the company has not been billing her for the service since it went down.

Lucy Cockney said she got so tired of waiting she switched to Netkaster Internet, a much more expensive alternative which requires the installation of a satellite dish.

"He kept saying it's going to be two weeks, so we'd wait two weeks. Then we'd phone again and they would say another week. They have to order the stuff from the States. It just went on and on and on," she said.

Cockney finally switched over to Netkaster in April. She said she would have kept the Airware service and was happy with its performance.

SSI Micro spokesperson Ryan Walker said they are looking at least two ways to fix the problem. He said they originally planed to use concrete piles to stabilize the tower.

"Unfortunately, that is looking like it will be another month or a month and a half before the contractor can get in there to do that. We feel that is too long a time so we're looking at finalizing another solution that we can get in there more quickly. We don't want to wait another month," said Walker."

He also said current customers have not been billed for Internet use since the outage in January. SSI Micro plans to credit Tuk customers with at least a month of free Internet to thank them for being patient.