<
https://macleans.ca/economy/forget-starlink-indigenous-innovation-is-canadas-best-bet-for-rural-internet/>
"In the summer of 2023, during the wildfires near Yellowknife, I got a text
from my colleague Lyle Fabian, the founder of KatloTech, a Northern
Indigenous-owned IT company. He sent me a photo of his campsite, set up like a
mobile office, his laptop perched on a folding table. He had created his own
Wi-Fi network that allowed campers to stream content from his servers and stay
connected with friends and family at the site. In the period between evacuation
orders and returning home, Lyle had bridged the digital divide for wildfire
evacuees.
Lyle’s work represents the kind of hybrid solution that northern, Indigenous,
rural and remote communities often devise to access high-speed connectivity in
Canada. But while some households and organizations connect to homegrown
solutions like Lyle’s, many others have adopted Starlink, the satellite
internet system operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Starlink is now Canada’s
sixth-largest internet provider, with around 400,000 subscribers and about $420
million in yearly Canadian revenue. It’s primarily used in the north, as well
as rural and remote areas—places that don’t yet offer fast, reliable and
reasonably priced non-satellite services.
Last winter, when I visited a fly-in community in the N.W.T. with my research
team, we asked around and found that most customers of Northwestel, Bell
Canada’s Northern subsidiary, had migrated to Starlink. After all, it just
requires a satellite antenna and unobstructed sky view. But Starlink is a
private company controlled entirely from the U.S. It funnels all its profits
there. The more we buy into it, the more we lock ourselves into a highly
centralized system we can’t control.
It wasn’t always like this. Historically, Canada was a world leader in
telecommunications. Canadians pioneered telephones and radio broadcasting.
Folks in rural Canada built networks of high-frequency “bush radios” and
community radio stations, many of which were set up and operated by Indigenous
peoples. We also created the world’s first domestic communications satellite
system, via Telesat. Later developments led to Indigenous-owned and operated
satellite, wireless and fibre optic internet systems."
Via Christoph S.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
