CRTC Consultation CRTC 2015-134:
Review of basic telecommunications services
Oral testimony submitted on behalf of the First Mile Community Consortium
by
Marc Awashish
IT Coordinator
Obedjiwan First Nation
1. Good morning my name is Marc Awashish. I have been the technology
coordinator in Obedjiwan First Nation for the last 20 years and I am here with Tim
Whiteduck, IT director of the First Nations Education Council (FNEC), which
serves 29 indigenous communities in Quebec.
2. Obedjiwan is an isolated Atikamekw community about 300 km northwest of
Roberval, Quebec -- more than half by gravel road -- and more than 700 km
north of Montreal.
3. We are one of the underserved communities still left off the telecommunications
grid. The local incumbent telco provides basic telephone service, but all long
distance calls are redirected over satellite.
4. For this reason, services such as Interac are not reliable. Further, residents
cannot gain from any incumbent package deals (for example: phone-VideoInternet) as they are not available in our region.
5. Obedjiwan First Nation, with the First Nations Education Council, is developing
telecommunications in our remote region of Quebec.
6. There has always been high demand for telecommunications in Obedjiwan, but
incumbent providers are not interested in in serving our remote community.
7. One company approached us with a microwave proposal but it was an
expensive, short-term solution, which did not meet our community’s long term
needs.
8. Therefore, we had to build and pay for our own infrastructure as funds became
available.
9. Ten years ago, we got a satellite connection through NICSN, working with KNET
and FNEC.
10. We also built our own local wireless network to connect to the satellite link for
residential service. Then in 2009, we partnered with a local forestry company to
construct a terrestrial wireless link to the nearest Fibre backbone.
11. The FNEC provided the support to secure the resources needed for this project.
12. We have spent many years building our local capacity and applications such as
distance training and telemedicine. This experience has proven difficult.
13. We had to find the funding programs, write funding applications, provide
technical and business cases, maintain community support - all in a very
challenging environment. Our regional organization FNEC always supported our
efforts and worked with us.
14. Finally, only recently we found the funding necessary to construct our own
165km regional fibre transport with our partners.
15. Now we plan to build our own local fibre network. We plan to use our network to
better serve our businesses, community organizations and residents. This
community control is critical to our people and necessary to meet our future
needs for generations to come.
16. We know that we will require funding for ongoing maintenance and upgrades,
and for technical training.
17. We request the Commission to approve the NISF (French: le Fonds du Nord
pour l’Infrastructure et les Services—FNIS?) so that other communities can
avoid the delays and roadblocks that prevented us from getting the network we
wanted 20 years ago.
18. And it will help all of us to maintain and upgrade our networks and build the
capacity to manage them ourselves.
19. Tim Whiteduck and I would be pleased to answer your questions.
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