Media.Knet.Ca

K-Net's Network Manager (Dan Pellerin) and Operations Administrator (Jeannie Carpenter) took a charter to visit three remote First Nations today. They picked up Bill Blair and another member of his team from Blair Electronics in Thunder Bay for the trip.

Marten Falls is part of the FedNor funded initiative to put a C-Band satellite earthstation in place to deliver a community broadband connectivity solution to support health, education and economic development initiatives. Fort Albany and Kashechewan are exploring ways to establish an interim broadband service for their communities while their planned fibre network gets constructed over the next three years.

Keewaytinook Okimakanak was invited by Fort Albany (lead by EDO Chris Metatawabin) to work together to put a solution into place as soon as possible so they can use these tools to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the signing of Treaty 9 with the world.
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The various on-line services provided on the Kuhkenah Network (K-Net) continues to show a monthly increase in usage on the traffic monitoring graphs that can be seen at http://linux.knet.ca/~tech/monitoring/webalizer/.

MyKnet.org continues to push the boundaries on traffic and popularity with another marked increase to over 110 million hits during the month of May. Despite a decrease in the number of visits, it seems that people are checking out more sites while they are on-line. The increased use of on-line C-boxes on individual homepages probably explains these dramatic usage numbers.

K-Net technicians are now travelling to the KO First Nations to install new IP telephone management systems. The new phone system will be operated out of the community e-centre and help support the ongoing operation of the local community network. This Keewaytinook Okimakanak project is funded by FedNor as a local economic development initiative.

This week Jamie Ray travelled to North Spirit Lake and John Moreau travelled to Fort Severn to install these new systems and provide training for the local Network Technician in the operation and maintenance of these systems.

Dan Pellerin, K-Net's Network Manager drafted a system description about this IP telephone project. The VOIP network description inculdes information how in this broadband application works in each participating First Nation and has some of the lessons learned from our experience with the development of this on-line service.

Click here to read K-Net Network Manager's description of the KO VOIP system.

The trip to Peawanuck First Nation, on the Hudson's Bay coast, on May 2 included meetings at the local school, at the band office and in the nursing station. Blair Electronics conducted a site survey of the community to locate the C-Band earthstation strategically in order to accommodate a local cable plant (if and when additional funds are acquired for the local loop). Carl Seibel from Industry Canada's FedNor and the KO team met with the Chief and Council and other community organizations to discuss the installation of the earthstation and getting their offices connected so they can access applications such as video conferencing and telehealth.

FedNor is providing the funding necessary to construct the C-Band earthstations in Attawapiskat, Marten Falls and Peawanuck. Health Canada and the First Nations SchoolNet program are supporting this project to get the local health centres and schools connected to this service.

Cal Kenny, K-Net's Multimedia Producer, put together a 2:30 minute video clip about this trip, the people involved and some great footage of the beautiful and challenging environment where the people live and work. Click here to watch the video.

Under Industry Canada's First Nations SchoolNet program, Keewaytinook Okimakanak's Kuhkenah Network (K-Net) is the Ontario Regional Management Organization providing a variety of support services for First Nation schools across the province.

Visits to the First Nation schools are providing the K-Net team with the latest information about the status of work that is required to ensure every First Nation is able to access broadband services for their community. As well, these visits are providing those communities that are planning for their broadband connections and applications with an opportunity to discuss and share development strategies and options so the local school is able to access broadband services. Various information documents are being shared to support the First Nations and their local schools in this community planning process. These documents and video material are available on-line and include:

• the Community Aggregation model connecting all the local businesses, homes, organizations together to share in the ongoing operational costs for community network;
• the e-Community Concept paper describing some of the broadband applications and support services available for First Nations;
• the Kuhkenah Network (K-Net) description highlighting  partner communities and services available;
• the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Telehealth paper, "Turning the Corner with First Nations Telehealth" (May 2005);
• the DVD called "Turning the Corner - Effective Use of Broadband in Canada's North" describing broadband applications operating in First Nations across northern Ontario and Canada.

This past week, Jamie Ray, K-Net's Helpdesk Technician made the trip to visit Constance Lake (elementary, high school, Adult Education and Alternative Education programs), Pic Mobert school, Pic River elementary and high school, Long Lake 58 elementary, Gingogaming high school, Aroland school and Rocky Bay school. Click here to check out the pictures from his visit to these schools.

On Thursday evening he wrote (in part) ... "Every place I stay at has no high speed in the community for connections in the hotels ... and trying to get on out on our dial-in service is next to impossible (busy all the time). So I was lucky tonight to have been able to dial-up to deliver this report ....

I spent some time with teachers and admin going through how to better control their internet connection and content filtering, discussed software (deepfreeze..cybersitter) and our experiences and recommendations for other schools like KiHS.

Also, lots of interest in moving connections into the community in Long Lake 58. .... And Rocky Bay's Ec Dev officer happened to have a meeting arranged next week with Fednor to discuss connections for that community.

All of the sites on the Superior Wireless connections are really eager and hoping for the upgrade to 10meg in Geraldton if it happens. I explained that we don't know if it will, and was careful to not make any false promises...but on the other had, I had to tell them this was in the works as any further building beyond the schools would add too much congestion to the shared T1 in Geraldton.

They all report that things have gotten a lot slower since the beginning.

In each community, where I could...I described the model community handout I had, and talked about options for getting connected and trying to make it sustainable. I was asked a couple times about $$$ for these types of things, especially in Long Lake 58. I know they are expecting some kind of follow-up in these terms, so I will prepare contact info for Brian to hopefully pick up where I left off. They were quite receptive, as well as Rocky Bay and Aroland, to us advising them in getting started and sharing our experiences.

Well...I'm out of breath, the words were flowing out faster than I could type. Unfortunately, I'd be here until Saturday trying to upload pics to the website. So I'll work on that as soon as I get something better than 19,200 dialup.Gotta love it."

Keewaytinook Okimakanak is partnering with the Kativik Regional Government (Nunavik region in northern Quebec) and the Keewatin Tribal Council (northern Manitoba) in the development and operation of the Northern Indigenous Community Satellite Network.

This past week, the team presented a Notification of Interest to Industry Canada's National Satellite Initiative Round 2 for additional satellite bandwidth to accommodate the variety of broadband applications that are now being carried on the network. All forty remote, Indigenous communities partnering with NICSN fit the NSI round 2 objective of requiring "broadband access where satellite is the only practical solution".

Applications that include video conferencing such as the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Telehealth project, the Internet High School, the telehealth needs in both northern Quebec and Manitoba demand additional bandwidth to deliver the type of service that terrestrially connected communities are able to access.

Representatives from the Attorney General's team visited Sioux Lookout on Tuesday to meet with the K-Net team to identify strategies for supporting court and corrections officials to better connect with the First Nations across the region. Lead by Robert Gordon from the ministry's Thunder Bay office, six others came from Kenora, Dryden and Toronto offices to find a way to work together to utilize and support the community networks and be able to effectively deliver their services in these remote First Nations.

Carl Seibel, from Industry Canada's FedNor program, was able to join the discussions and assist the provincial officials to understand the federal government's investments in the First Nations local telecommunications infrastructure.

The Grade 8 Supplementary Courses program (http://g8.firstnationschools.ca) is offering science, mathematics and english literacy ministry curriculum materials for First Nation students across the province. First Nation Grade 8 classes are located in communities across the province.

Click here to find out what the participating classroom teachers are saying about how the science and math courses are supporting their students doing the first two terms (2004-2005 school year).

Nibinamik First Nation leadership is supporting the development of a local broadband service that provides community members with access to telehealth and high speed data services. The local wireless community network is connected to a Kuhkenah Network T1 service that can support video conferencing from different locations throughout the community.

K-Net's Network Manager (Dan) and Systems Analyst (Terence) are in Summer Beaver working with their local technician on the local network to ensure their broadband network is able to manage the different traffic properly.

Keewaytinook Okimakanak (K-Net Services) is working with Attawapiskat, Peawanuck and Marten Falls First Nations to construct a C-Band satellite earthstation for the community's broadband connection. FedNor is providing the funding to Keewaytinook Okimakanak to coordinate this construction project with the three remote First Nations.

On May 2, Carl Seibel (FedNor Telecom Project Officer), Blair Electronics (the contractors for installing the C-Band earthstation and cable plant), Cal Kenny and myself flew to Attawapiskat (on the James Bay coast) and then Peawanuck (on the Hudson's Bay coast) the next day. Cal took along the video camera to capture a short story about the community and the work being done in preparation for their new broadband satellite connection that is being installed over this summer.

The links to his 3:30 minute video are ...