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The Astronomical Cost of Internet in Canada's Most Remote Areas

It is one of our recently founded Canadian traditions to complain about our bandwidth caps, but the situation in Nunavut stands out.
​Homes on Baffin Island, Nunavut. Image: ​Dani J/Flickr

​The new game Never Alone is an exceptional thing. ​Flaws aside, it presents the language, myth and tradition of the Iñupiat, an Alaska Native population, in a medium that typically doesn't do that very well. The cruel irony, however, is that thanks to the astronomical costs of internet access in isolated regions of Canada, the very people who would be most interested in playing will be charged the most to play.

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It is one of our recently founded Canadian traditions to complain about our bandwidth caps, but the situation in Nunavut, Canada's northernmost territory, makes our already fairly tiny violins microscopic. Ryan Oliver, founder of Nunavut-based studio Pinnguaq, was looking forward to playing Never Alone, and was fortunate enough to be in Ontario when he downloaded it. Had he been back in the hamlet of Pangnirtung, however, it might have been a different story.

"When Never Alone was announced there was a lot of excitement in Nunavut," said Oliver. "Obviously, stylistically and thematically it's something that really appeals to people."

"I bought it when it came out and immediately noticed it was a 2.5 gig download, which isn't even that big for a game to be honest, but it got me thinking about what a huge chunk of bandwidth on a modem in Nunavut that is," he added.

On Pinnguaq's website, Oliver broke down just how much damage a 2.5 gig game can do. Most of Nunavut has its internet provided by Qiniq, a satellite service whose basic plan comes with 10 gigs a month at $80. If $8 a gig wasn't bad enough, each gig over runs $17.50. Qiniq's top package, ATII Pro, is 30 gigs for $369.95, and $15.00 per gig overage.

Oliver pointed that that for Nunavut-based Inuit to play a game with Iñupiat heroes, a culture they're closely tied to, they'd have to tack on an additional $20 to $30 in bandwidth costs to the purchase price of the game given the value of each precious gig. And while that's assuming they'll break their bandwidth cap (which Oliver says is likely) and a small video game may seem like a superfluous thing to worry about, it's a good illustration of how the infrastructure is lacking for those communities.

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"It's a huge issue, it makes it very difficult," said Oliver. "There's no reason to participate in the online world. Now that distribution is moving digitally I thought it would be interesting to look at through Never Alone. The cost of living in Nunavut is that much higher."

Sure, playing World of Warcraft would demolish your bandwidth (something Ryan could attest to) and it's stressful to think about how huge a hit you'd take from a tyrannically-sized online game like Destiny, but then imagine how business is impacted.

Take Oliver's Pinnguaq for example. For the studio to work on its own projects is a special sort of nuisance. Doing things we take for granted elsewhere—sending files to other teams, sharing updates for Xcode or Unity, and so on—requires paying huge bandwidth costs.

The only other option is to deliver data manually, forcing people to work out of sync, which is simply impossible in many cases. Oliver said he has a filmmaker friend who had to relocate to Montreal entirely because her files were simply too large to send to between people. And without better infrastructure support, the far-flung region is left stunted.

"Despite the limitations, Nunavut has an incredible potential for digital culture," said Oliver. "Facebook can keep communities together, lower bandwidth intensive things. But even something like watching a YouTube video at the wrong time of day, say from five to seven, is impossible. The internet is basically unusable."

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The proposed Arctic Fibre route. Image: Arctic Fibre

Ryan said that he doesn't lay the blame squarely on Qiniq, which at least is servicing the area. He's more disappointed in the federal Canadian government, specifically in choosing not to support an "exciting" alternative, ​the Arctic Fibre, a cable that would stretch from Japan to the UK, servicing Nunavut and much of northern Canada in the process. The cross-continental project costs an estimated $600 million, if not more.

It isn't the perfect solution. While it would introduce service redundancy to areas that need it the most, laying a cable along the Arctic sea floor would be a major undertaking, and repairs would be difficult.

"I think you'll always have to maintain some kind of satellite network for when those moments do happen," said Oliver, "but for the 99 percent of the time that a fibre optic line is functioning, it would be incredible from every aspect from education to business development."

Hopefully, everyone especially keen on Never Alone will get a chance to play it. Games made by and about indigenous people aren't nearly as common as games about stoic elves and cartoon birds. But even if it's for video games, communication or business, the infrastructure situation for northern Canadians is in need of a few power-ups.