CONNECTING THE NORTH.

Sudbury has paved the way for the information highway, linking remote communities to a high-speed network.

Northeastern Ontario's access to the broadband highway has just be en paved. The extension of the high-speed, fibre optic highway or broadband telecommunications network outward from Sudbury is being heralded as a major step toward improving the competitiveness and prosperity of the region.

NetCentral, one of the five Northern Ontario community-based networks, is leading the way in expanding Internet links between institutions, connecting businesses and linking 40 communities across the Sudbury and Parry Sound districts, Chapleau and Manitoulin Island, to connect to the other four major Northern Ontario centres.

It is regarded as an investment that is not only expected to allow better access for Sudburians and northerners, but deliver Internet service to support the needs of most high-tech corporations on a level that is as good or better than any major city in Canada.

"There's probably more fibre per capita in Sudbury right now than any other city in Ontario," says Gary Polano, the executive adviser to Sudbury Mayor Jim Gordon and special projects manager.

Sudbury's move toward creating a telecommunications strategy began in 1997 with the creation of Sudbury Regional Network (sureNet), a partnership comprised of 21 health, education, municipal and private-sector stakeholders in the Sudbury area. It later created the footprint for NetCentral.

Spurred on by the United States deregulation boom among hydro companies in electricity and telecommunications in the mid-1990s, officials at the then-Sudhury Hydro copied the model by building high-speed connections to link their substations while selling surplus capacity to business.

As broadband novices, they brought in AT&T Canada and Cisco systems as technical and marketing support before laying about 400 kilometres of fibre throughout the city to link educational institutions, hospitals and businesses on private point-to-point networks.

Some funding from the Ministry of Economic Trade and Tourism, Access Partnership Program (TAP), and other leveraged resources allowed for the installation of state-of-the-art switching equipment known as asynchronous transfer mode. Considered the backbone of the $5million network, it supports Internet protocol and allows for the creation of virtual private networks for health or security purposes.

Greater Sudbury Telecommunications Inc., a subsidiary of Greater Sudbury Utilities, was formed to become a wholesaler of high-speed Internet to their service-provider clients.

"We brought competition into the marketplace where there wasn't (any) and we've been able to drop Internet prices by 50 per cent," says John Jeza, the utility's telecommunications vice-president. "We're now as cost competitive as any major city on broadband prices."

The sureNet venture paid almost immediate dividends for Sudbury since launching in February 1998 creating 3,000 jobs through the call centre industry alone.

Through Gordon's urging to expand the fibre optic highways across the North, the province later kicked in $16 million to be split between the city, North Bay, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie and Timmins to create the five community-based networks including NetCentral.

Tim Molyneux, NetCentral's marketing and sales manager, says expanding the high-speed network to the outlying communities should inject new life into the stale northern economy and keep people from moving away to find work.

The community network model has introduced a practical and low-cost way to implement the federal government's goal of having high-speed Internet available to every Canadian by 2004.

Since few big telecom companies are battling for market share in northern communities, there are no players lining up to build expensive infrastructure. This situation is not unique to remote areas, says Jeza. Even the suburbs of major cities like Toronto do not have high-speed Internet service and do not expect it come anytime soon. That is the beauty of community-minded network partnerships such as NetCentral, which included a consortium including AT & T, Cantel, Cisco Systems, Manitoulin Telephone, Parry Sound Cable, Regional Cablesystems and Greater Sudbury Utilities.

With access to high-capacity telecommunications infrastructure that governments, hospitals and schools require, traditional local companies have more reason to flourish in the region. But that service may also draw new high-tech companies up from Highway 69 from southern Ontario and beyond.

That big city exodus may be starting, says Polano. The city is in the final stages of negotiation to bring in an international software development firm to locate in Sudbury as early as this fall.

For the time being, NetCentral is now in the process of rolling out the fibre optic pipeline further into outlying areas.

"Our next phase further down the road is adding community portals and the ability of small business to use electronic commerce," says Molyneux. "The big step is allowing small businesses in places like Little Current that would never have access before to fibre to suddenly have a competitive advantage."

Molyneux, whose telecommunications experience lies with working with oil companies and financial institutions in Western Canada, has been working out of the Sudbury mayor's office as a technical adviser and, by circulating in the NetCentral communities, has been spreading the word to people about the benefits of high-speed connections.