Canada moves ahead with own info highway.

Some Canadians want to go beyond simply using the information superhighway: They want to help build it and determine the rules of the road.

When voice, data, wireless, broadcast and cable merge into one giant fiberoptic network, these Canadians are determined to be successful like the McDonald's at the interstate interchanges, not left on the wayside like so many hometwon restaurants.

Leading the drive for new technologies and applications in Canada is a non-profit corporation called Canarie (Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education), a public-private partnership aimed at developing the communications infrastructure for an information-based Canadian economy.

Canarie recently announced awards totaling $6.2 million (Canadian) for 14 projects that propose to develop hardware, software, services or products to make riding on the information superhighway easier.

"The information superhighway is being built all around us," says John Manley, minister of industry, whose department helps fund Canarie. "It is crucial that Canada's small and medium-sized businesses join in the kinds of research and product development that Canarie is supporting if Canadian companies are to gain a substantial share of the world market for future information products and services."

The 14 projects range from a prototype ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) network and traffic model to a core-switching technology to a software package that filters electronic mail. A second round of grants will be announced later this year.

Funded on a 50-50 cost-shared basis, the 14 projects are expected to result in an investment of close to $23 million. More than 50 businesses, including universities and research institutions, are involved.

Three-part plan

Supporting new technologies through grants is just one step in a three-part plan. Canarie also intends to upgrade Canada's National R&D and Educational Network (CA*net) to T1 or higher speeds and to establish a highspeed experimental test network. Direct investment for the three areas will be more than $100 million, of which the federal government has contributed $26 million.

"Networks comparable to CA*net in other countries are already much faster than T1," says Andrew Bjerring, president of Canarie. "In the United States, for example, NSFnet was at T3 speeds two years ago. We hope to be in the multigigabit range by the end of this decade."

Because tariffs on CA*net are much more expensive than in the U.S., it's tempting for Canadians--80% of whom live within 100 miles of the border--to just tie into the U.S. infrastructure, Bjerring says. Canarie hopes to offer them an alternative.

"Nothing less than a massive infrastructure program focusing on the Internet portion of the information superhighway will be adequate if Canada is to keep pace," Bjerring says.

The Canadian Business Telecommunications Alliance (CBTA) supports the Canarie project, says CBTA President Joseph Schmidt.

"We see it as an integral part of the information highway," he says. "We can't afford to stay out of the North American (information) grid."

He says the CBTA wants to see research work, commercial applications and "government attention with a business emphasis."

Schmidt cautions against blind adherence to the "government line" that the Canarie project is necessary to preserve Canadian sovereignty and culture.

"To the extent government is sensitive, so are we, but we don't want to sacrifice effective competition and choice on the altar of culture and sovereignty," Schmidt says. "We want to see commercial principles applied, and customer need viewed as paramount."

There is a related effort billed as an entrepreneurial response to the government's goals for the information superhighway. Stentor, an alliance of Canadian telephone companies, intends to pool resources among its companies to upgrade local, regional and national networks to provide multimedia services into homes, offices, hospitals and schools throughout Canada. The effort includes an $8 billion upgrade of local telephone networks to provide broadband capability.

Test network

In developing its test network, Canarie will link a number of regional initiatives, according to Bjerring. He says local telcos are putting "substantial resources" into those initiatives. After the test stage, Canarie hopes to gradually move everything into CA*net.

Beyond the technological merger into a "network of networks," Canarie sees a convergence of the computing, telecommunications and information industries.

"The resulting transformation won't be restrited solely to technologies, but will also extend to the role and purpose of the industries that use them," Bjerring says.

He says U.S. Vice President Al Gore "has done a great service to Canada" by raising people's awareness of Internet in general. Canada needs a comparable national figure to press the point at home, he adds.

Manley recently announced that McGill University Principal and Vice-Chancellor David Johnston will be chairman of a new national information highway advisory council. Manley also issued a discussion paper for the council to use as a starting point as it develops a strategy for building Canada's information highway.