NorthwesTel powered up by subsidies - Canada

NorthwesTel, an operator serving Canada's remote northern territories (and wholly-owned subsidiary of Bell Canada) will receive [euro]43 m in subsidies by 2004. The money will allow it to undertake its biggest service improvement plan ever and to offset some of its high operating costs.

"We started to receive capital subsidies over a four-year timescale in January 2001 from service providers in the more populated areas of southern Canada," says Barry J. Sugden, certified engineering technician for NorthwesTel. "This means that we can offer long-distance rates comparable to those available in southern parts of Canada and provide basic services to customers in unserved or underserved remote areas."

The funding arrangement entails southern Canadian telcos making 12 payments a year from 2001 to 2004. The subsidy is administered by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), a regulatory agency of Industry Canada -- a department of the Canadian federal government.

Sugden says the funding is absolutely necessary. Although Northwestel is a relatively small operator in a very remote region of Canada, its customers still expect fixed mobile and data services (including broadband internet access). But reaching those customers -- 110,000 northern Canadians in 96 communities, where no town has a population of over 20,000 people -- is a costly business. Its operating region is scattered throughout Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and northern British Columbia, and over a vast area of four million square kilometres.

NorthwesTel's customers in its remotest operating areas include the government, police and emergency services. Resource industry companies (namely oil, gas, timber and mining) as well as pockets of people who require seasonal communications (such as hunters, outfitters and wilderness tours) via manual mobile (VHF) radio, make-up the remainder.

NorthwesTel serves its remotest areas using telecom battery equipment. "A great case in point is the Nahanni microwave repeater station which is in one of the most distant areas of northern Canada. There really can be very few operational telecoms installations in the world that are more exposed or remote," says Sugden.

The station is 2,000 miles north of Vancouver and located on an 8,600 foot peak in the McKenzie mountain range of the Northwest Territories. It is subject to winter storms and temperatures of -40[degrees]C and often inaccessible for weeks on end. The Nahanni station is only reached by helicopter and overlooks the small mining town of Tungsten, where there is a tungsten mine.

According to Sugden, the high cost of engineer visits led to NorthwestTel opting for the Ultima.plus and NCX nickel-cadmium batteries from Saft -- a battery provider and a 100 per cent subsidiary of Alcatel -- rather than valve regulated lead acid (VRLA) batteries.

It cost NorthwesTel approximately [euro]6.4 m to install the Saft nickel-cadmium batteries into the site (the largest amount spent on the helicopters delivering the batteries and technicians).

The batteries are expected to last for over 20 years (VRLA batteries have a life span of five to ten years). The additional life cycle periods of the nickel-cadmium batteries -- according to NorthwesTel -- means that they should be around 50 per cent cheaper than VRLA products. The ROI period is projected to be ten years.

Sugden adds that nickel-cadmium batteries are three times the price of VRLA batteries but 'it was worth it for their performance, reliability, long service-life and low maintenance requirements'.

NorthwesTel has around 200 battery sites. Sugden states that only routine maintenance trips to the sites, which are scheduled quarterly for the heavy route systems and semiannually for remote locations (along with occasional emergency restorable visits), are needed.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Horizon House Publications, Inc.
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