Satellite Communication
SSi has built an extensive satellite network across the NWT and Nunavut with infrastructure in over 50 communities. Most of these locations present daunting challenges including extreme weather, fly-in access and long winters with limited daylight hours. These conditions make these networks hard to run and maintain. Even so, our service is incredibly reliable.
We have invested in a number of leading technologies to deliver cost-effective, high-performing service to our network’s customers. Our full-mesh TDMA network allows for quick and clear voice and video communications over our satellite networks.
Our network also provides Bandwidth-on-Demand. If one community is not using its bandwidth allotment, another community can. This allows network capacity to be delivered where it’s needed most.
Building and maintaining satellite networks in the world’s most difficult conditions has given SSi Micro the capability to install similar networks anywhere in the world. As mentioned, we have successfully deployed many of the same technologies in Africa, Indonesia, and the South Pacific.
QINIQ Satellite Broadband network
In 2005, the Nunavut-wide QINIQ (meaning “to search” in Inuktitut) satellite network connected some of the world’s most isolated communities. An award-winning innovation, the network also helped bridge the digital divide between southern and Northern Canada.
Before QINIQ’s launch, people in most of the territory’s 25 communities were surfing the internet using snail-slow – and incredibly expensive – dial-up connections. Sending a single digital photo could take hours and service was often unreliable. Today, QINIQ allows Nunavummiut to use the web for a variety of new educational and cultural purposes. Recently, the Atiigiallak internet plan was released, with up to 1.5 Mbps and a data cap of 10G/month.
QINIQ uses a unique wireless modem that will roam in any community on the network. It will even work a few kilometres out of town at the hunting or fishing camps popular with Inuit in Nunavut. Since its launch, the network’s innovative nature saw it named an “Intelligent Community” by the New-York based Intelligent Community think tank. Still Nunavut’s only truly accessible territory-wide network, QINIQ’s subscriber list continues to grow.