"The K-Net Development Process" presented at Telecom Policy Research Conference
The CRACIN team of Adam Fiser, Andrew Clement and Brian Walmark produced the following paper - The K-Net Development Process: A Model for First Nations Broadband Community Networks.
This paper was presented at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) September 23 to 25, 2005, held at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Va. (click here for more information about this annual conference).
Abstract
The Kuh-ke-nah Network (K-Net) is a community network that currently comprises 60 First Nations communities across Ontario, and Quebec, Canada. K-Net Services is the telecom and ICT arm of Keewaytinook Okimakanak Tribal Council (the Northern Chiefs), an organization located in northwestern Ontario that brought the original vision of K-Net to life amongst the Tribal Council’s six member communities in the mid 1990’s.
Currently the telecom infrastructure under K-Net control comprises a C-Band Public Benefit transponder, IP video conferencing and telephony, web and email server space, and a variety of terrestrial and wireless links that effectively connect small, scattered First Nations communities with each other as well as the wider world. In the space of less than a decade, these K-Net communities have gone from a situation in which it was common for there to be but a single public payphone in a settlement, to the point where forty of these communities have broadband service to most households. This level of service exceeds that commonly found in large urban centres such as Toronto.
But K-Net is far more than a provider of basic carriage services. Rather than be a seller of products, it is a facilitator for First Nations organizations and communities. In this capacity it brokers relationships among various agencies to provide a wide range of public and civic services in remote communities (e.g. telehealth applications, Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet, the Keewaytinook Internet High School (KiHS), personal homepages and email addresses, video conferencing and webcasting/archiving of public events). It thus constitutes a (nearly) full-spectrum, vertically integrated service provider oriented to meeting the social and economic development needs of its primary constituents.
First Nations community ownership and control over local loops means that each community can adapt broadband services to address local challenges and priorities. For some communities, the priority is creating residential telephone access or cable plant for entertainment purposes, for others it is promoting education opportunities and public health online, and for others it is economic development. This aggregation of demand from disparate users creates economies of scale and allows the dynamic reallocation of bandwidth to meet social priorities (high school classes, remote eye examinations, residential connectivity). While a reflection of the technical savvy and political acumen of its initiators, K-Net’s success also derives from its adoption of core principles rooted deeply in the traditional First Nations values. This is seen in its decentralized structure, which encourages resource pooling, knowledge sharing, and respect for local autonomy. Together these values support community-driven needs and objectives to shape the network and its applications.
This paper traces the evolutionary trajectory of K-Net development and examines the advantages and drawbacks to the emerging model of telecom service provision in which K-Net is a pioneering exemplar. First, it chronologically charts the expanding set of relationships among the heterogeneous key actors across the public, private and civil sectors. Then it reviews the contemporary situation of K-Net, how the combination of such vital factors as community ownership/control, bandwidth aggregation and dynamic allocation, local (ICT) skills development, and social-needs orientation interact with each other and are operationalized within this network of relations. Finally, the paper draws some preliminary conclusions about the principles and viability of this model, likely future development, and the prospect that it offers a workable model for other community networking initiatives, especially in traditionally underserved areas.