“This project is really about the communities and about the membership at the community level opening up a new world to the benefits that we take for granted sometimes in the urban areas,” said Jason Rasevych, Matawa’s economic development advisor. “There would be advantages to health services through telemedicine and video counselling. There would be advantages for economic development because we would have employment and training that could be linked to video training and online training tools.”
Rasevych said the schools and learning centres within the Matawa communities would also benefit from a higher speed fibre optic network.
“The remote communities of Matawa — Webequie, Nibinamik, Neskantaga, Eabametoong and Marten Falls — are looking to connect to an inter-community fibre optic network that would also see a connection from Marten Falls to Aroland,” Rasevych said. “Those six communities are involved in a planning project to look at what the routing would be for this project, the potential for economic development in the construction side of jobs and long-term any potential for maintenance jobs.”
Four of the remote Matawa communities are currently served by satellite Internet services while Nibinamik is served by microwave Internet services.
“They have all had challenges, issues with bandwidth,” Rasevych said, noting the schools, health centres and band offices in the communities have been impacted. “So we’re seeing significant issues, with not only speed but reliability, and this affects the day-to-day operations of (the communities’) public facilities.”
Rasevych said the youth have also been using more devices to communicate with each other both on the reserve and off the reserve as well as to explore the Internet.
“We’re seeing more use now with tablets, iPhones and other types of smart phones,” Rasevych said. “So you’ll have a household of a family where there may be 10 or 15 devices trying to connect to the wifi at one time.”
Rasevych said a number of issues have to be finalized before the project can advance.
“One is the finalization of routing — that is going to be up to the communities,” Rasevych said, noting that a First Nations broadband working group has been established. “We have representatives from the communities that assist with the community engagement, the consultation with the traditional land users and the trappers (to locate) where there could be areas of concern for the community and those land users.”
Matawa held an open house on the project for off-reserve band members from Aug. 26-28, which was attended by 21 people. Community members were asked for input about whether they want broadband, with faster Internet, cable and telephone services, if they know of any areas where the network cable should not be placed and if they know the ground conditions along the proposed route.
Rasevych said the communities could be connected within the next two years.
“It is really dependent on those pieces, one, the routing, also talking with the network partner that could provide the bandwidth and then, three, the funding request to government,” Rasevych said. “Because the project lies in a remote area, construction could only happen in the summer. But line clearing could happen during the winter.”
Rasevych said the four road-access Matawa communities, Constance Lake, Long Lake #58, Ginoogaming and Aroland, have better Internet services than the remote communities.
“But there are still gaps of connecting the infrastructure from those communities to the head-end framework (so) they would receive the higher speeds,” Rasevych said. “And the infrastructure within those communities hasn’t been up to par.”
Rasevych said there is currently a proposal by Greenstone to upgrade the Internet services within the area townships, including the four road-access Matawa communities.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Rick Garrick
Quelle/Source: Wawatay News, 03.10.2014
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