It shouldn't be difficult, as we just arrived by plane. I haven't been in the office, so I rewrote my speech on a napkin. I'm sure it will be five minutes, but I think we can cover it all.
First of all, for those who are unfamiliar, Nunavut Broadband is a not-for-profit organization that is tasked with the improvement of the quality of life of all people of Nunavut through the deployment of communications technology. We're not necessarily constrained to just broadband, but as our name implies, that has been the primary initiative up until now.
We're present in all 25 communities. There is a high-speed Internet solution in those communities. By having a QINIQ modem, you can actually access the Internet seamlessly while moving from community to community, which is a technological achievement that you don't have in the south. In that sense, we're actually more advanced, which is interesting. The idea is that the QINIQ network will be a platform for a variety of services. For example, the first solution it was providing was a banking platform.
Nunavut Broadband first began as the Nunavut Broadband Task Force, and one of the main problems it identified was the lack of banking in the territory. I think five years after that initial study, 50% to 60% of people access banking through the Internet. Using that as an example, some of the next problems to be solved would be distance education, partnering with Arctic College, and ultimately e-health services.
I'm relatively new in the position, but my understanding of it is that the key to its success has been the model of the community service providers. In each community there is either a business or an individual who administers the QINIQ account, gives out the modems, and collects the fees. So in each community there is at least a job or 1.5 jobs created. I think we pump in the order of $500,000 to $600,000 annually back into communities, which is a relatively small amount. But when you consider what the community profile is, it's actually quite significant.
In addition to that, with the community service providers--who are obviously local people in each community--we target an upgrade to their skills every two years. We're in the process of putting together the next community service provider conference. So we're trying to grow the capacity of these individuals. The other thing that is interesting is that I think 18 or 19 of the original 23 are still in place five years later. That's quite significant, because, as you know, turnover is a problem. This has been quite a stable platform.
It's very timely that Nunavut Broadband will have a release of infrastructure too--actually next week--that will build on the original platform. We're expanding the capacity to accommodate the users that have grown by about 50% greater than anticipated. The network was originally built for 2,000 people. It now accommodates about 4,500, so it's outgrown.... It's a victim of its own success in that sense. So this upgrade that will be forthcoming next week will address that additional capacity.
In the future, there are also additional upgrades for increased speed. One of the challenges of broadband is that it's not a static thing. What was defined as broadband five years ago at a certain speed is no longer, because of the growth of the web and richer applications. In fact, what we rolled out is now too slow. You always have to stay ahead of the curve, so we're attempting that with these infrastructure upgrades.
As well as the actual bandwidth, there are applications that are bandwidth savers, such as large file transfer applications, video conferencing, and some applications targeted at the classrooms specifically, which are going to be rolled out in March. This is part of the infrastructure to roll out.
In terms of challenges, an oft-quoted statistic in the north is that a unit of connectivity that you would have in, say, Ottawa costs 100 times more here than it would in the south, because it's all satellite networks, obviously. There is no terrestrial infrastructure. What costs $60 a month in Ottawa would be $6,000 here, unsubsidized. So it's a tremendous challenge that way.
One of our main challenges, and probably my main function, is to address what happens to the network post-2012, because our funding is project money—Infrastructure Canada, the Broadband Canada program—and it comes to an end. Unlike other infrastructure projects—if you build a bridge, you have a bridge—unfortunately, the network comes to an end. Our primary challenge is addressing what happens post-2012, when the funding comes to an end, when the bridge disappears, essentially.
So in addition to just running the operation, the key thing is to secure long-term funding, because like most things in the north, it can't really exist in an unsubsidized fashion, like food or anything else. It's just that the population is too sparse over the distance.
The only possibility of an alternative to that would be if you look at the Greenland Connect model. They've run fibre from Europe to Iceland to Greenland to Newfoundland. It's on an order of magnitude of a thousand times more capacity than what we have. It's a very long-term solution. The capital investment I think was $200 million upfront, but we may spend that ourselves over the course of a decade and not be any further ahead. So it would be prudent to look into that as a study. In fact, that's one of the things on the slate for this year.
Another challenge we have—and it's no slight to anyone in the room—is our cashflow for our core funding. The bane of most NGOs is running the operation dependent on cashflow funded to agencies you have no control over. So a lot of operational focus goes into trying to maintain running the organization, trying to respond to the reporting needs, things like that, the balance between due diligence and being too oppressive in these funding requirements. That's also a challenge in a small organization like ours. And like many, we share space with the film board and the craft people, so it's a very common topic at coffee.
What we like to say is that bandwidth in the Arctic is like water in the desert, and it needs to be managed in somewhat the same way as a precious resource. And it will be that way for the foreseeable future unless we go to a fibre-type option.
There are some timely events unfolding that I think back our case, though. Finland, you may be aware, has just recently announced they've enshrined broadband access as a legal right, which is quite progressive. They're the first country in the world. So that may be the direction of other countries. That was about a month and a half ago.
The World Bank has also released a report that ties broadband access to the expansion of economic development.
Also, currently here, of course, everyone's familiar with the GN report card, and there are half a dozen, I would say, different aspects in that: the criticisms around decentralization, education, all the things that could be addressed by, basically, a better communications infrastructure.
As I said, I had to rewrite it on a napkin on the way up on the plane, but I think essentially that's the background and those are our primary challenges. There are the obvious ones with trying to physically set up this infrastructure with transportation challenges and weather and things like that. The infrastructure is largely in place; we're in the upgrade phase, so those challenges have primarily been addressed.
I think that's probably been about five minutes.