GJOA HAVEN, Nvt. – After solving a month-long internet capacity issue for its customers in this small Nunavut community (pop. 1,300) on the southeastern coast of King William Island, ISP SSi Micro decided to give its customers rebates for their troubles.
“On Thursday, January 24th, with invaluable assistance from some helpful QINIQ customers, we identified a problem causing insufficient satellite capacity to be allocated to the community of Gjoa Haven,” said an email send to customers by Jeff Philipp, founder and CEO of SSi Micro (Qiniq is one of SSi’s brands providing broadband and mobile service to 25 communities in the Territory.)
“We are very aware of the crucial role the Internet has for all Nunavummiut, and offer our sincere apologies for this failure. In order to correct performance quickly SSi technicians were flown to Gjoa Haven to make changes to the satellite backbone which enabled us to add critical capacity. As of Thursday, January 30, the problem was corrected and services were restored,” says the email.
This problem caused a number of customers to experience poor internet performance between December 20 and January 30 and the extended duration of the problem will see the company issue pro-rated service credits for each day of the service impairment, it said.
“SSi continues to press for open access to the new federally subsidized satellite backbone (operated by Northwestel) that came online last year. This capacity was made possible by a federal government investment for the benefit of all Nunavut consumers, and as such is to be open to all Nunavut internet service providers on a wholesale basis. We are making concerted efforts to get access to this new backbone so that we may improve service levels to all QINIQ customers,” adds the Philipp email.
