Inukshuk Wireless Broadband

A work colleague, who happens to live outside of London, told me about a new service he's trying out. You see he lives in the country where the cable doesn't go and DSL doesn't stretch so in spite of the fact that he is a computer professional it is difficult to obtain broadband Internet access.

Up until now, he had one practical choice: Execulink Wireless Internet. This is a line-of-site "terrestrial microwave" service. I actually know of two people at work that have used this service. Provides about 60 KB/s down and 20 KB/s up so it is better than dialup, but that's about all you can say. And that's under good conditions. My colleague was experiencing intermittent service - dropped connections, bad throughput etcetera, and inquired with Execulink technical support. They discovered a rival service had setup a new tower between Exculink's tower and my colleague's home. Not sure what service it was, but it could possibly be High Speed Anywhere.

The more interesting information that he got both a flyer from the new provider and also a call from Rogers offering him their new Roger's Portable Internet service. This a 1.5 Mbps down, 256 Kbps up service (187 KB/s down, 30 KB/s up) that is installed on cellular towers. I was intrigued by this and started looking into it further. This is the fruits of a joint venture between Rogers and Bell called Inukshuk, which aims to provide broadband access to the under served rural areas. Their site calls their network "pre-WiMAX", but the important thing is that it is non-line-of-sight. Plus the intention is to add transceivers to existing cellular towers owned by both Rogers and Bell with both companies supplying the actual Internet service. Bell's service is called Sympatico Unplugged.

I thought this sounded great - getting the companies with the cellular towers involved was excellent and we can keep the broadband Internet access more available. My parents live on a small stretch of gravel road, within ~2 km of the nearest cable line and too far for DSL. They cannot even get broadband access (except satellite) at their house, but this is very hopeful. Rogers is starting to offer service in the London, ON area, so they are or will be within range soon. Though I think their 286 will need a RAM upgrade from 1MB...

I'm also hopeful that the service may upgrade to WiMAX soon because Intel is pushing hard to include WiMAX capable radios in their laptop wireless chipsets. That would translate to being able to buy a 1.5 Mbps/256 Kbps service for $50/month that works pretty much anywhere in Canada. Including off at Dale's farm or my parent's house, or Kelowna. Now that would be cool.

For your further edification, here are some more links on Inukshuk:

Digital Home

A brief review and description of the service from March of 2006

Globe and Main Review

A review of the service by Jack Kapica of Associated Press from July of 2006

Broadband Reports Review

Review and forum discussion of the service from March 2006