Thunder Bay Telephone officials meet with K-Net and partners to plan next steps

The initial meeting with Thunder Bay Telephone on Friday, Sept 8, resulted in many new exciting opportunities for the various projects that Keewaytinook Okimakanak and their First Nation partners are undertaking. Angela Crozier of NAN, Rob Wesley of Matawa, Franz Seibel of KORI, Brian Beaton and Adi Linden of K-Net, along with Carl Seibel of FedNor were able to meet with several key Thunder Bay Telephone officials (including John Lyon from Superior Wireless who is now on contract with T.Bay Tel for the transition period) to discuss the various initiatives that K-Net and our partners are developing.

Thunder Bay Telephone officially took over ownership of all Superior Wireless assets on September 1, 2006.

The Superior Wireless team was working over the past few years with the K-Net team to develop broadband connectivity solutions in a number of First Nations and locsl organizations. All indications from our initial meeting with Thunder Bay Telephone, is that everything will "business as usual" with our new partner.

All the staff and resources from Superior Wireless are now moved into the Thunder Bay Telephone resulting in many more options and efficiencies in how best to design and deliver the planned connections. Some of the planned work will now be able to migrate to existing fibre connections.

Existing connections will be maintained and developed in partnership with Thunder Bay Telephone, the new owners of Superior Wireless. All new connections will be developed in partnership with Thunder Bay Telephone and their partners. One example of this is the new fibre interconnection at the water tower in Sioux Lookout. This new connection that was installed last week will now support a redundant route for K-Net’s existing 100Mb connection back to Thunder Bay.

The K-Net team is looking forward to working with Thunder Bay Telephone to develop these opportunities for improved broadband connectivity in the First Nations.