New business connecting remote areas to the world

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The owner of a small First Nations company has brought high-speed Internet to cottage country to ensure that his people can share in an increasingly electronic world.

"We're bringing Wahta to the world,'' said Bill Hay, whose company Indigiinet Corp. began installing wireless broadband Internet service to homes and businesses on this tiny Muskoka reserve and to their neighbours in cottage country in early May.

"We're so proud that one of our members has built that kind of business. It's very exciting for us to be on the leading edge of the computer age like this,'' said Sylvia Thompson, an Elder among the 170 Mohawks living on the Wahta reserve. "There are so many negative stories about First Nations people, so it's wonderful to have something positive like this happening in our community."

Bill's sister Shirley Hay, who is the band's former administrator and is now a band councillor, said her band is thrilled to be getting the new service because it is becoming increasing difficult for First Nation communities to function without high speed Internet.

In an electronic world, government documents from Health Canada and other ministries are now such large files that they are hard to download, Shirley said.

"It's so tedious using dial-up because the old telephone lines that service our community were never designed to carry data,'' she said, adding that the average dial-up connection speed at Wahta is only 19 kilobits per second. That means the computer often times out before a download is complete and the whole process has to be started all over again.

"It's very frustrating and time consuming,'' said Shirley.

Bill, 44, and his wife Darlene, are already successful entrepreneurs whose business Instapicphoto.com is one of the leading professional digital photographic companies in Canada,

Six years ago, frustrated by the slow speed of dial up connections when e-mailing large photo files to clients around the world, he decided to seek other options.

"Connectivity was identified as being the biggest barrier to our business here in Wahta,'' said Bill.

When he approached the broadband companies and told them he was from Wahta, the response was not encouraging.

"They told us we were too rural, so we were on our own,'' he said.

Existing telephone systems that link much of rural Ontario can't offer broadband-digital subscriber line (DSL) technology-and cable service doesn't reach many rural areas. As of December 2004, according to Industry Canada data, that left 53 per cent of Ontario communities dialing up to get online.

Satellite broadband service was not an option because the upload speed was too slow for sending Instapic's huge files, said Bill.

He talked to other Wahta businesses, including a water bottling plant, a haulage company and a building contractor, and all said they were suffering the pains of the digital divide doing business on dial-up with a world increasingly wired for broadband.

"I realized our First Nation needed this, so I decided to do something about it,'' Bill said.

The Hays belief in the project was so strong that they cashed in their life savings and went into personal debt to raise the $250,000 capital needed to launch the company.

"There were no guarantees of funding, so I took it upon myself to finance this project," said Bill.

Shirley, who is also a host on the local radio station-Hawk 98.3 FM-points out that even the radio station is hampered by the lack of high speed Internet. Downloading a 10-minute clip from a First Nation news service on dial up can take over one hour.

The reserve operates a cranberry marsh and ships orders of cranberries all over the world so having high-speed access will help speed up order processing, Shirley added.

Although there are at least two companies already supplying wireless broadband Internet to parts of cottage country, much of Wahta is not in "line of sight" of the transmission towers.

"Up until now thre has been no affordable, reliable solutions,'' Bill explained.

He assembled a team of industry experts and developed relationships with telecommunications carriers and launched Indigiinet with the goal of supplying broadband not only to his own people but also to First Nations communities across Canada.

"The response has been overwhelming. There is a real need for this,'' said Bill, who is already working to bring broadband to First Nations communities in northern Ontario and British Columbia and on the East Coast.

Shirley hopes that one day all First Nations in Canada will have access to high speed Internet.

"We exchange a lot of information nation to nation, so it will help us maintain relationships and forge new ones,'' she said.

"Broadband can be a way for a First Nation to utilize the network to assist in the preservation of language and culture," Bill added.

Fibre-optic telephone lines bring broadband Internet service to a tower in Midland that relays wireless Internet signals to an antennae on top of a disused communications tower on the reserve, which in turn transmits Internet to homes and businesses.

Because the signal is at 900 megahertz, "line of sight'' to the tower is not so critical, so Bill hopes to offer high-speed Internet to everyone within a 10-kilometre radius of the tower-an area that includes the community of Bala and some Lake Muskoka cottages.

The eventual goal is to build a series of towers "just above the trees so they don't spoil the natural beauty" to supply broadband Internet to all of cottage country, he said.

By using an existing, but disused tower, and by acting as wholesaler as well as distributor, Bill has managed to keep the cost down to around $200 per household for installation in comparison to as much as $1,200 charged by other wireless companies. Monthly fees for home use are in the range of $50 for unlimited high-speed access.

"Our goal is to make it affordable,'' Bill said.

Shirley sees th new service as an economic development opportunity for her people and as a chance for young people on the reserve to stay at home while pursuing careers in technology.

"It's going to open so many doors. We're all very excited,'' she said.