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Demand high for broadband service, corporation says

Nunavummiut responding to online survey in droves

JIM BELL

Members of the Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation want to know whether you want broadband Internet service and how you would use it if it were available.

The corporation is a membership-based not-for-profit body set up to carry out some of the recommendations of the now-defunct Nunavut Broadband Task Force.

The group is preparing a 10-year business plan that it will use to back up funding applications to Industry Canada for money to pay the cost of planning and installing at least some broadband infrastructure in Nunavut.

To put a "human face" on that business plan, it's conducting a survey of Nunavummiut - via fax and Internet - to find out what they need and why they need it.

"The needs analysis will give us a better understanding of how people would use this," said Lorraine Thomas, the broadband corporation's project manager.

The survey is available at www.nunavut-broadband.ca/ access.htm. There's one version for businesses and organizations, and another for individual Internet users.

Thomas said people may complete the forms online, or print them off and send them to any individual, organization or business that might be interested in telling the corporation what they think.

Though the survey was announced just last week, with little publicity, Nunavut Internet users are already responding to it in droves.

"The original idea was to get 100 responses. However, I've already got that. The response has been amazing. People have said, 'I want broadband so badly, I'll do anything,'" Thomas said.

She added one surprise is the "overwhelming response" from smaller communities.

"Usually with something like this, in the high-tech sector, it's sort of the folks who have jobs and access and live in the larger communities who tend to have been the leaders in thinking about how this stuff would be used, but this time, it's simply the reverse," Thomas said.

Right now, Thomas said, Internet access in Nunavut tends to be restricted mainly to those who have government jobs.

But she says broadband's higher speeds - which allow the relatively quick downloading of audio and video - will make it easier for Inuit to communicate orally.

"We want to make sure that the people who don't speak English, and who may not be working for the Government of Nunavut, we want to make sure those people are using the service. And broadband is different than [dial-up] Internet in that you can actually access materials that are oral," she said.

Meanwhile, Northwestel announced this week that a form of broadband Internet access may soon be available to Iqaluit residents.

The company announced that it expects to offer an ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line) service in Iqaluit to business and residential users beginning in August.

ADSL allows a regular phone line to be used as a high-speed digital connection to the Internet, and users can talk on the phone and use the Internet at the same time.

Northwestel says it will charge residential users a fee of $80 a month for the service, while business users would pay $260 a month, with a one-time installation fee of $99.

Though that may be welcome news for Iqaluit Internet junkies, it doesn't do much for residents of the other 24 communities in Nunavut.

So in its 10-year business plan, Nunavut's broadband corporation will have to demonstrate the benefits of providing high-speed audio and video to every community in Nunavut.

"One of the biggest points that we have to make to Industry Canada is that low-speed, English-based Internet access is not a basic level of service for us," Thomas said.

The corporation will submit its business plan June 6.

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