Many groups working on high speed internet for area

Ken Johnston
Editor

One way or another high speed internet service is destined to arrive in the Rainy River area.
Several parties are working at providing the service in different ways. The one that is just about ready to start up is for school use only.
Steve Danielson of the Rainy River District School Board said that the board has been working on getting high speed internet to all the schools from Rainy River to Atikokan for two years now. At the same time a group of Northwestern Ontario telephone utilities began working on a “Back-bone” from Manitouwadge to Rainy River that would see broad-band equipment installed on Norwest Mobility’s cellular phone towers in the area.
Norwest Connex, consisting of Thunder Bay Telephone (Norwest Mobility), Dryden Telephone and Kenora Telephone, were looking at putting about 50 megabytes of bandwith on the towers. Danielson said that the board had about $600,000 budgeted to bring bandwidth to their schools. They approached Norwest Connex about partnering to provide even more bandwidth. Together they inked a deal that will see approximately 150 megabytes of bandwidth on the towers in this area. The school board will retain 1/3 of the bandwidth for school use only, the rest will be open to local internet service providers to develop high speed internet opportunities for the general public.
The schools hope to start their system up later this month, however that is dependent upon completion of equipment installation at all towers as well as a 200 foot tower extension at the Barwick tower.
However local Internet Service Provider Dave Ashworth (Jam 21) said that he is exploring other options than the Norwest Connex backbone. Ashworth said that the new backbone is not proven and at this time he is looking at a couple of options.
One option is a two way wireless transmission system that he already has in place in Fort Frances. An antenna was placed on the Fort Frances water tower and Jam 21 users can purchase or lease a component to send and receive internet signals at 56,000 Baud rate. Ashworth said that it is fairly affordable for the average citizen noting that a person can buy the transmitter/receiver for $1,000 and pay about $50 per month for high speed service or they can lease the unit and receive high speed service for between $80 and $90.
Jam 21 is looking at putting up antennas in Emo and Rainy River at a cost of about $20,000 and is optimistic that they will be about to get them in place within the next year. He is currently looking for someone to partner the costs with in the west end. The system Jam 21 is using does not need phone lines to work, hence freeing up family phones or reducing the need for extra phone lines.
While Norwest Connex does not see their backbone expanding into the Morson or Nestor Falls areas, Ashworth said that if he is successful in getting the system into Emo and Rainy River he definitely sees possibilities for those two other areas.