Local First Nation first to receive high-speed Internet

Throwing the switch to turn on High Speed Internet access for the Doig River First Nation. Photo: Kyle Thomas – Energeticcity.ca

The Doig River First Nation is the first of several remote aboriginal areas across the Province to receive funding for broadband Internet service.

In B.C., the Pathways to Technology project will be improving or even initially connecting various First Nations communities to high-speed Internet services.

The B.C. government and the federal government are providing a combined $40.8 million, with $23 million of it coming from the Province through a project contract with Telus to provide Internet access to the majority of the First Nations communities. The project is being managed by the All Nations Trust Company.

Minister of Labour, Citizen’s Services and Open Government Stephanie Cadieux was in Fort St. John, Tuesday, to make the announcement.

Cadieux says the Internet has changed how people do business, interact with the world and, more specifically, with their families.

She says there has been a huge shift in how we interact with each other and younger generations, in particular, rely on the Internet for gathering information and making decisions.

Cadieux also says that with technological improvements come certain benefits as well as challenges. She says outside larger urban centres where certain amenities are close by, Internet access provides educational opportunities, healthcare advances and quick access to information.

She says there are several ways technology can now be used to impact people’s health, well-being and access to opportunities; opportunities that were unavailable 20 years ago.

Until Tuesday, the Doig River First Nation only had access to satellite and dial-up Internet. Broadband Internet service was connected at the Doig at approximately 12 p.m. Chief Norman Davis says the new Internet service will connect the community’s members to the world.

Davis says he expects one of the many future opportunities with the new service will be for community members to hold teleconference calls with doctors.  He also says he hopes the new, faster Internet will allow the Doig River First Nation to post more than 50 years of archive data online, providing people with information about their culture.

Through the Pathways project, high-speed Internet is expected to be introduced to more than 50 First Nations communities over the next three to five years. Overall, Cadieux says the Province hopes to raise the number of B.C. residents connected to the Internet from 93 per cent to 98 per cent within the next 10 years.