I'm surprised no one has noticed this significant development for Nunavut, Northern Quebec, and Labrador. This will drive the price of the Internet service down for the affected communities, etc. Affected communities will get 6 to 7 times the bandwidth for the same price as the current satellite technology.
http://arcticfibre.com/
All of their presentations provide full of info:
http://arcticfibre.com/?page_id=361
Quote:
From the official website:
|
Basically,
Arctic Fibre, a Toronto company, wants to lay undersea fibre-optic cables hence will provide a shortcut between Tokyo and London, as well as Tokyo to NYC by going through the Northwest Passage. So, this will reduce latency between the three cities, which is very important for stock markets in the these 3 cities.
There will be 4 cables to be laid down the NW Passage, each with 80 wavelengths of bandwidth capacity of 100 Gbps per second (a capacity of 32 terabits for the entire network).
- 3 cables allocated for
Tokyo - London Express, with a stop at midpoint station at Cambirdge Bay to amplify signals. Hence, the capacity will be 24 terabits per second.
- Fourth cable with capacity of 8 terabits per second operating as
local service from Tokyo to NYC touching:
--> Alaska: Nome, Kotzebue, Wainwight, Barrow and Prudhoe Bay
--> Labrador: Nain
--> Newfoundland: Milton (to hook up with the rest of East Coast)
--> Quebec: Montreal (latency will drop to
129ms)
--> Nunavut: Cambridge Bay, Taloyoak, Gjoa Haven, Igloolik, Hall Beach, Cape Dorset, and the first recipient of this service come 2014 (and if approved), Iqaluit. If I read it right, these residents (52% of Nunavut's population) will enjoy
unlimited bandwidth.
--> This cable will land somewhere between Chisasibi, QC and Moosonee, ON, which provide opportunities to hook up with the south.
--> The mentioned communities above will get much faster Internet service
without federal government assistance. Instead, their installation fees have been paid (i.e. subsidized) by international carriers and domestic companies.
Federal government assistance will be required to hook up secondary backbone and spurs to Northern Quebec, mainland Nunavut, Sanikiluaq, the rest of Baffin Island communities, Kugluktuk, as well as Resolute.
The proposal no longer includes Tuktoyaktuk (despite being included in the map) because it will also receive its share of fibre optic cables by the time the NWT Highway 8 is extended from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk and NWT Highway 1 is extended from Wrigley to Inuvik, which will allow fibre optic cables from Edmonton to reach all communities along the Mackenzie River Valley Corridor, which includes Tuktoyaktuk. This means that this project will entirely bypass NWT.
Arctic Fibre will also partner up with another company (WireIE) to provide microwave extensions for Kimmirut, Baker Lake, Whale Cove, Kugaaruk, Repulse Bay and Arctic Bay. They will get a minimum internet service speed of 50 Mbps, with a
low-cost upgrade to 1 Gbps.
This will leave only
Grise Fiord to remain dependent on satellite transmissions. However, despite that, Grise Fiord will be able to double its bandwidth thanks to the undersea fibre optic cables. The most expensive section will be from Pond Inlet to Resolute, which will cost $30.6 million to serve only 200 people, but remember, Resolute is a strategic location for the Canadian Forces, so it is likely they will pull it through despite the price tag. If the Resolute extension wouldn't happen, then only 1% of Nunavut's population (343 people) will remain dependent on satellites.
Total federal government assistance needed to hook up the communities at the secondary network will amount to $192M. This will be easy money, especially that they have given NWT and Nunavut funds for housing money costing $1B.
Before finalizing the project, they sought for demand for both international and domestic network. Apparently, the response was incredible, with massive companies like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Bell and Rogers joining the bandwagon. Many Asian, American, Canadian, and European companies have joined as well.
Since there is enough demand, they have applied to Industry Canada for federal funding and landing permits, and have applied to Japan and UK for cable landing permits. They are also close to an agreement on US carriers for Alaskan communities. Ex-Iqaluit mayor Madeleine Redfern is currently assisting the company to overcome regulatory hurdles concerning Nunavut.
Once built, Arctic Fibre will sell bandwidth to telecommunication companies, government, stock traders, etc.
Well, there were concerns for icebergs hitting and destroying the cable. Apparently, they have argued that the fibre optic cable between Norway and Svalbard has not been damaged by icebergs, and the southern Greenland fibre optic cable network is done by horizontal drilling, a method that they will implement in laying these cables.
Telesat, opposes the idea by cost and iceberg concerns. Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation is also opposing, saying that every Nunavut community should be connected by fibre optic cable, not just a few communities. (So does that mean that if Toronto gets a subway line, should all communities of Ontario get a subway line?)