Inukshuk Wireless Inc. is a joint venture of BCE Inc. and

Rogers Communications Rogers Communications Inc. is a Canadian communications and media company operating primarily in the fields of wireless communications, cable television, telephony and Internet, with significant additional telecommunications and mass media ass ...

, created in 2005 to establish a

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

-wide network for wireless Internet connectivity in 45 major cities and over 120 rural communities, throughout the ten

Industry Canada Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED; ; )''Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada'' is the applied title under the Federal Identity Program; the legal title is Department of Industry (). is a department of the G ...

licensed areas. Bell and Rogers separately market the service to their customers as Portable Internet, although Bell also offers a Rural Internet service.

History

Inukshuk Internet, a predecessor to Inukshuk Wireless, was originally formed in 1999. Inukshuk was acquired by

Microcell A microcell is a cell in a mobile phone network served by a low power cellular base station (tower), covering a limited area such as a mall, a hotel, or a transportation hub. A microcell is usually larger than a picocell, though the distinctio ...

in 2001, which was acquired by Rogers in 2004. The spectrum and technology was merged into the joint venture with Bell in 2005. Until November 7, 2008, Bell Internet Portable was referred to as Sympatico High Speed Unplugged or Bell WiMAX Unplugged. Likewise, Bell Internet Rural was referred to as Bell WiMAX In-home. Bell had announced termination of its Portable Internet service on February 14, 2012. Rogers had announced termination of its Portable Internet service on March 1, 2012. The 30 Mhz slice of 2300 Mhz spectrum was transferred to Orion Wireless Partnership, for a fixed wireless LTE national network.

Network

The Inukshuk network was built using pre-

WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a family of wireless broadband communication standards based on the IEEE 802.16 set of standards, which provide physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) options. The WiMA ...

technology provided by Expedience solution from Motorola, now Nexpedience Networks.

Coverage

The network provides connectivity to 45 major cities and more than 120 rural communities throughout the ten

licensed areas. Activation, however, is only available in certain rural regions. Bell only allowed customers in the following regions of the province of

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

to subscribe to Portable or Rural Internet: *

Bruce County Bruce County is a county in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. It has eight lower-tier municipalities with a total 2021 population of 73,396. It is named for James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin and 12th Earl of Kincardine, the sixth Governor General of t ...

Dawn-Euphemia Dawn-Euphemia is a township in southwestern Ontario, Canada, in Lambton County. Residents primarily are employed by the agricultural industry, or by local industries such as Union Gas distribution centre, along with various smaller agricultural ...

Dufferin County Dufferin County is a county and census division located in Central Ontario, Canada. The county seat is Orangeville, and the current Warden is Janet Horner. The current chief administrative officer is Sonya Pritchard. Dufferin covers an area of ...

Laurentian Valley Laurentian Valley is a township municipality in Renfrew County in eastern Ontario, Canada. It borders on the Ottawa River, the city of Pembroke and the town of Petawawa. This township was created on January 1, 2000, from the former townshi ...

* Middlesex County *

Simcoe County Simcoe County is a county and census division located in the central region of Ontario, Canada. The county is located north of the Greater Toronto Area, and forms the north western edge of the Golden Horseshoe. The county seat is located in Mi ...

* South Glengarry

Services

Wireless Internet

Monthly bandwidth limits for customers were not tightly enforced, and simply existed to protect against network abuse. Bell's Rural ("In-home") service used the same technology as the portable ("Unplugged") product, except the modem itself was mounted to a user's home in the direction of the tower it would have connected to. Hence, it was not designed to be portable. Bell also offered "Unplugged" service for businesses.

Peer-to-peer throttling

Inukshuk Wireless throttled

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network, forming a peer-to-peer network of Node ...

(P2P) traffic on its network during peak times of the day. For Bell customers, downloads and uploads were throttled to 512 kbit/s from 16h30 to 17h59 EST, then to 256 kbit/s from 18h00 to 23h59 EST, and again to 512 kbit/s from 0h00 to 1h00 EST every day. No throttling occurred from 1h00 to 16h30.

References

External links

* {{Canadian mobile phone companies Bell Canada Internet service providers of Canada Rogers Communications Telecommunications companies established in 1999 1999 establishments in Canada Joint ventures