Groupe Leclaire GLG Inc.
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Innovation is our Motivation:
RTS Canada has partnered in a number of technological firsts. From our early days introducing cthe community radio concept to creating small-system cable Internet service, we also generated community supprt forCanad's first long range fibre-optic network.
Above are Buckley Petawabano, a founder of the Eeyou Communications Network (ECN) and the founder of the James Bay Cree Communications Society and RTS Canada's first president, Fernand Fred Leclaire.
ECN is a highly specialized fibre project designed to suit the needs of distance education, telemedicine and providing Internet to an underserved and unserved community. In the words of Grand Chief Matthew Coon-Come:
"The rural-urban divide -- the Digital Divide -- is a phenomenon felt in many Aboriginal and northern communities, communities without broadband connections to large centres.
"This division does more than deprive Internet to the disadvantaged; it affects the way businesses develop, it affects the way the economy develops, it affects the way we can attract human resources to the North to support our development, it affects the way health and education is delivered and it makes distant travel necessary, if only to obtain basic services. It deprives the regions of access to medical specialists, advanced education, alternative telecommunications services, and the capability to compete effectively.
"By addressing this need to close the Digital Divide, we believe that rural communities can thrive, and create a future that is both local and global. It will provide the incentive to develop our own tools using IP technologies over broadband infrastructures.
"Our challenge is to maintain our culture and live globally. We need the means and the ways to allow skilled workers to work and communicate from our remote area and also to work locally. We want a role in the wider economy so that our future engineers, lawyers and professionals can provide services while continuing to live and to participate in the communities.
"These new capabilities -- IP and broadband technologies -- will help our young people succeed and serve our own community at the same time.
"ECN will be in the communities, deploying fibre-optic lines and technical services. This means communities can develop local resources in technologies to operate and to maintain this network. It also means we can develop jobs, skills and human resources - and create an economic domino effect."
More information at www.eeyou.ca