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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
When Telesat's Anik F2 satellite went offline in the early morning hours of Oct. 6, every satellite-served community in Northern Canada was suddenly cut off from communicating with the outside world.

For Nunavut, that meant every single community was affected. In the NWT, 10 communities are serviced only by satellite: Colville Lake, Paulatuk, Sachs Harbour, Ulukhaktok, Wekweeti, Ekati mine, Gameti, Deline, Lutsel K'e, and Trout Lake.

"It was really, really hard," said Iris Catholique of Lutsel K'e, where two community members were still in hospital in Edmonton following the Air Tindi crash Oct. 4. "Especially because we had no communication with family members to find out what was going on with our people."

Until service was restored in Lutsel K'e at about 11 p.m., the only way to get news into the community was by radio.

SSI micro customers in all NWT communities, other than Yellowknife, were without service during the disruption.

"There was just literally not a thing that could be done until (the satellite was restored)," said Jeff Philipp, president and CEO of SSI, one of two major communications service providers in the NWT and Nunavut.

The communications disruption also cancelled flights across the territories. First Air cancelled 48 flights throughout the day as a direct result of the outage, though the airline still operated between Yellowknife, Edmonton, Hay River, and Fort Simpson. Round trip flights were also still able to fly between Kimmirut and Iqaluit, and charter flights up to the mines in Snap Lake and Diavik flew in the afternoon.

The cancelled flights were expected to affect nearly 1,000 passengers. First Air operated additional flights on Oct. 7 to accommodate those who were grounded the day before.

"This will ensure everyone gets to where they need to be for the Thanksgiving weekend," said Christopher Ferris, VP of marketing and sales for First Air.

Around noon Mountain Standard Time, Telesat released a statement saying that it had regained control of the satellite.

This was welcome news to those scrambling to restore communications in the North, because if Anik F2 had gone down permanently, every antenna and dish pointed at the satellite would have had to be physically re-pointed at the only other satellite that covers the North, Telesat's Anik F3 - and it all would have had to be done without communications in or out of the affected communities.

"We would just literally need to charter an aircraft or three aircraft and start sending crews to each community," said Philipp. "And ideally in a scenario like that, NorthwestTel and SSI would be working together."

Telesat got the Anik F2 back online late in the day and services were restored overnight. In another statement issued on Oct. 7, the company explained the problem: "This particular anomaly was the result of a software error encountered during a routine manoeuver which triggered the satellite to place itself into safe mode, shutting itself down and pointing itself at the sun to ensure it remained powered," it read, adding that "the anomaly" is believed to have been caused by a software update recently uploaded to Anik F2.

The disruption in communication meant there were no health care communication links or banking services, among other services available. The disruption also raised questions about Arctic security and sovereignty.

"Seeing how much interest there is in the North and Northern sovereignty and the Northwest Passage, there's no way we can continue with this sort of fragile communications ecosystem," said Philipp. However, fixing the problem would mean many millions of dollars and years of construction, since the construction season in many of the communities in question is so short.

"We would never have accepted it if Edmonton got disconnected for eight hours from the rest of the world," said Philipp, adding that one reason why there was not an immediate uproar over the loss of service was that the choice to live in remote communities often goes hand-in-hand with hardships and inconveniences.

"But that's really not the point here," he said. "The point is that we need those people to live (in the high Arctic) to be able to claim that we really are a sovereign nation with a Northern infrastructure that we own and is part of our country. We need those people there."

- with files from Galit Rodan

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