The fight to be the North's internet provider

It’s been a few years since Starlink came on the scene in the North, and the company is rapidly changing the landscape, both literally and figuratively. Starlink dishes are everywhere in the communities, and people have Internet access like never before. But what does that mean for people’s lives and for the company Northwest Tel that used to be virtually the sole provider? The CB CS Luke Carroll has been looking into this and joins me now in studio. So, Luke, First things first, just how popular is Starlink right now? Well, why don’t we have a listen to what Tyrone Raddy of Tuk Tuk Tuk had to say about it. It’s just like the Edmonton Oilers. Yeah, everybody has and everybody is a fan of them for sure. No, I’m not positive about the number of Oilers fans there, but Starlink’s popularity I am sure of. I called people in Sax, Harbor and Gamete and was told that basically every household in those communities have one. In the fall, a nonprofit launched a pilot program that offers free Starlink Internet to people in Ula Huktuk using SIM cards. But many in the community say there’s limited uptake because people already own one in enterprise. Michael Senamore, the former mayor and current Hamlet councillor, says there’s about a dozen in town now, and he feels really good about that. If you remember, last year the community had to evacuate in a communications outage and he says they relied on the only two star lengths that they had in town at that time. So for so long, of course, the only choice for many people in many communities was Northwest Tell. How is this switch to this new technology affecting the legacy company? Yeah, so we don’t know the numbers of people who’ve switched from Northwest Tel to Starlink. I asked Northwest Tel for that number, but was told they didn’t have it available. I reached out to SpaceX, who owns Starlink, and I never heard back. But at least in the remote communities that I reached out to directly, Starlink seems to be taking over now. I spoke with Catherine Newsome with Northwest Tel and she says the company is still confident it’s the best and most popular option in the North. She talked about why she thinks that’s the case. And secondly is our technology. We have a fiber powered network. We’ve been rolling out fiber left, right and center and we’re now offering, you know, 500 megabyte per second download speeds, unlimited monthly data. It’s the fastest home Internet you can get in the North and it’s built for modern broadband and and it’s really a superior technology type, the same type of technology that powers downtown Calgary. So Newsom also talks about how the company employs hundreds of northerners and invests in local organizations and causes. Now I asked Newsom about the overage charges, this being, you know, a big issue to many customers. And she says they’re aware of the monthly usage amounts, that they can be challenging and that Northwest Hill wants to bring unlimited monthly usage in those remote communities, you know, like like Sax Harbor and Gamete. Now Northwest Tel has launched a program to use new low orbit satellites to a series of communities. And this happened around the same time that Starling came on the scene. Now that’s the the same technology that Starlink uses. Is that correct, The low Earth orbit. So how is it working for Northwest Tel? So I spoke with Tom Zubko. He runs new N Networks. It’s a local Internet provider in a Nuvik. And here’s his analysis of that program that Northwest Tel is launching. I mean as you know they got quite a big in induction of money a few months ago for satellite only communities and I suspect that their that service is very, very, very under subscribed, even if it’s subscribed at all. I don’t really know. I’m not even sure in most places if it’s been turned on or not, so from the sounds of it, not a very popular option Shannon. Now a lot of infrastructure projects like the Mackenzie Valley fiber optic line were started before Starlink was even a dream in a Northerners eye, right? What is happening with projects like that? So the latest iteration of that project involves extending the fiber optic line from Anuvik to Tuktiaktak. And a spokesperson from the territorial government said in an e-mail that at least the Tuktiaktak project is continuing because it will bring better Internet than what can be accessed through Starlink Northwest, Tel argues you know the same point. So it’ll be interesting to see what the uptake is considering what Ratty said about Starlink’s popularity. Shannon. All right, Luke, lots of changes always happening here in our home territory. Thanks so much for telling us about it. Thanks for having me.