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Dan Brabrand traveled from Richmond, Virginia to Sioux Lookout on Sunday, Nov 23 to work with the K-Net team in setting up an IP telephone system that will serve Keewaytinook Okimakanak and our partner communities and organizations. Dan works with Kevin Gerber out of their Virginia office. Kevin has worked with K-Net for a number of years starting when he was in Toronto working with the Education Network of Ontario.

The team spent time setting up the Call Manager so it can route the calls from the IP phones to their proper locations across the network and to their proper gateways. Some time was also spent setting up the conferencing system so conference calls can also be facilitated over this network. Check out the pictures of the training and the equipment.

IP phones are now located in the K-Net office in Sioux Lookout with single phones located in each of the other Keewaytinook Okimakanak offices across the network. This includes KO offices in Balmertown and Thunder Bay and each of the KO First Nation e-Centres in Deer Lake, Fort Severn, Keewaywin, North Spirit Lake and Poplar Hill. The roll out plan to expand the number of operational IP phones will be implemented over the next couple of months as everyone becomes comfortable with supporting these new services and opportunities.

K-Net staff meet with Fort Severn staff and resource people in Sioux Lookout to further develop the digital information collected during their trip to their traditional territories. Robert Hunter is putting all the data onto the digital maps for that region so it can shared on-line. Cal Kenny is putting together the video material so it to can be shared on-line. The coordination and support for this work is coming from George Kakekaspan, Fort Severn’s Special Projects Coordinator and Tom Terry of Voyageurs North who are involved in documenting and translating the stories. George is working with Barney Turtle to get the material posted on the Fort Severn web site.

Funding applications are being developed to further this work in partnership with FedNor (Carl Seibel) as well as with Natural Resources, Canada’s Sustainable Communities Initiative.

The November 13 issue of Wawatay News contains three more news stories about the work being completed within the Kuh-ke-nah Network of Smart First Nations demonstration project.

This week's issue of the

• Teleradiology will allow patients to stay at home
: New digital radiology machines are now installed in Deer Lake and Fort Severn Nursing Stations. Images are now being transferred directly from the Nursing Stations and being read in Sioux Lookout or Thunder Bay or anywhere on the network where a radiologist / doctor is available to interpret the image and make appropriate recommendations to the nurse in the Nursing Station.
• Partnerships bring benefits to First Nation communities
: The K-Net – Bell Canada partnership has contributed to improved connectivity and services for all the communities across Northern Ontario. The investments being made by Bell and FedNor in the construction of broadband infrastructure is supporting the development of new broadband applications enabling socio-economic initiatives in all the First Nations across the region.
• K-Net Showcase
- contains photos from the K-Net photo gallery at

Various newspaper articles are being scanned and stored for reference purposes

Lac Seul First Nation is working with K-Net to bring a broadband connection to all the different organizations across their territory. Pierre Parsons is coordinating the roll out of these broadband services for the three communities. Pierre has been purchasing, installing and networking the hardware in all the different offices in each of the three communities over the past few months patiently waiting for Expertech and Bell Canada to complete the construction of the fibre optic cable build over to Hudson. From Hudson, a T1 connection is to be installed to the Band office in Frenchman’s Head as part of this project.

On Nov 12, Pierre met with Dan Pellerin at the K-Net offices to discuss various connectivity solutions for reaching Whitefish Bay and Kejick Bay from their new T1 connection located in Frenchman’s Head. Everyone in Lac Seul is preparing for their new broadband connection so new services and applications can be introduced and developed across the First Nation territory.