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The IP telephone business case produced by the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Research Institute (KORI - http://research.knet.ca) for K-Net's IP Telephone project is now available on-line. This IP telephone project is supported with funding from Industry Canada's FedNor program. Click here to see the entire IP telephone business case (PDF - 1.9Mb).

The K-Net Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) telephone network is an internal telephone system linking data telephones across the region. The IP telephone network was developed as a result of community demand, the community broadband network, band and tribal council leadership initiative and funding through a number of partners. It is an application built on the existing Kuhkenah Network (K-Net). The long-term objective of K-Net is to support a wide-area network (WAN) of local community networks linked across the country to other networks that share and distribute broadband services and programs benefitting local communities. See http://phones.knet.ca/ for more information about how this service works and for IP telephone contact extension numbers.

The objective of the IP telephony network is to compliment the analogue network with IP phones using data lines in locations where the majority of calls are made to locations within the network. Calls made to Sioux Lookout, Dryden, Wabigoon, Balmertown, Cochenour and Red Lake are now considered local calls. Also a call made from one network registered data phone to another is a local call. Using data lines for these calls significantly reduces long distance costs and increase usage and viability of the community network’s data service. This new telephone network is now operational in five of KO’s affiliated communities and Slate Falls First Nation. See Appendix A for a case study of the new Slate Falls IP telephone network and their local Application Service Provider that was created to manage it and the other data connection applications. Telephone network access is now available in all the major service centres in the KO affiliated communities and in KO’s administrative offices. In October 2005 there were over 230 registered phones and over 100 voice mail accounts.

The IP telephony network infrastructure, and management structure was created as a result of Industry Canada’s FedNor Demonstration Project to provide Internet Protocol Telephone over a private network. Some of the key deliverables within this project includes:

• Install 30 IP telephones in the various community programs each of KO’s 5 First Nations and 60 phones in KO administration offices of Sioux Lookout, Thunder Bay and Balmertown.
• Compare long distance telephone usage and costs to those of the same period the previous year, for a sample of First Nations and the KO offices in order to identify savings.
• Train a community technician to install, maintain and provide local technical support to the local IP telephone system and its users.
• Produce a business case and model IP telephone deployment plan to be shared with neighbouring First Nations and agencies to assist them in assessing the merits of using IP telephone services.

The purpose of the business case is to outline the development process of creating and maintaining sustainable community IP telephone local area networks (LAN). It is now being posted on-line so interested First Nation communities and their service agencies might evaluate the benefits of establishing and utilizing an IP telephone network and other broadband applications made available through local community data networks.

Keewaytinook Okimakanak Research Institute (KORI) and Community Network Technicians (CNTs) collected the Bell Canada long distance telephone bills of the three main service centres in five KO affiliated communities. The data suggests that between 2003 and 2005 the use of the LAN demonstrated an average cost savings of 30% in long distance charges. The savings can be attributed to lower long distance rates and the use of the broadband network as staff can now use e-mail, videoconference and IP phones as a substitute to using an analogue phone line. Because the new IP telephone service is still under development it is unclear what portion of that savings can be attributed to the IP telephones. However by calculating the substitution rate, (the current number of analogue long distance calls that could be made between data phones) it can be determined what long distance savings can be expected as the network is fully utilized. The average substitution rate for KO’s communities is 85% for the clinic, 40% for the band office and 45% for the school.