Telesat last week said that it, in partnership with the Canadian national government, has launched broadband communications services in 30 aboriginal communities in Northern Ontario, named the Northern Indigenous Community Satellite Network. The network provides a variety of broadband applications on a civil level, including high-speed Internet access to schools, distance learning, tele-medicine and video conferencing services.

“This particular project was one that has been in [development] for five or six years,” Paul Bush, vice president of broadcasting and corporate development for Telesat told Satellite News. “Telesat, along with the communities themselves and the Canadian government have been looking at ways to bring broadband to all communities in Canada. The area is fairly difficult to serve because of the distances they are away from the south. Access to a lot of these communities is via plane or via road for only part of the year.”

In fact, the inaccessibility of the location and the value of the services being installed were brought to light at an event to kick off the new network.

“I was supposed to be at the inauguration of the network, but couldn’t land because of weather conditions,” Bush said. “That’s pretty common at this time of year. Other tribal leaders couldn’t make it either, so we all participated via video conferencing.”

The video conferencing aspect also comes in handy for distance learning and tele-medicine applications.

From an educational standpoint, Bush told of an event where a Canadian astronaut was able to have a one-hour discussion with school children in the area. “As you can imagine, getting an astronaut to pop in and visit a science class, [even if by way of satellite], is quite a thrill,” Bush said.

On the medical side, the network gives doctors and nurse practitioners access to other doctors in regional medical centers to help diagnose what may be the best way to treat a patient, or if necessary, to determine whether a sick patient is ok to fly on a commercial airline or would require medivac services to enable more immediate medical attention.

Outside of the weather and other environmental and terrain issues, Bush said a big challenge was funding the project. Telesat has contributed satellite capacity to the project valued at $20 million. An additional $12 million to cover the ground infrastructure has been funded by the government.

(Paul Bush, Telesat, 613/748-8786)