Broadband Initiative

One of the goals of the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe’s Broadband Initiative is to provide Akwesasne the tools to succeed in today’s digital world. By providing available, public access to Broadband services through five public computer centers on the Akwesasne territory we plan to bring digital literacy to our community.

What is Broadband?

Broadband is a term to describe different types of high-speed Internet access and commonly refers to high-speed Internet access that is always on and faster than the traditional dial-up access.

The tribe has hired consultant Anthony George to head up the tribe’s project.  The tribe is currently waiting on the draw-down status for the federal funding. 

The Broadband Initiative Program (BIP) is a federally funded program to expand high speed Internet access to rural parts of the country that are considered under-served.  The Saint Regis Mohawk Community qualifies as such a location.  The project is being funded by a grant/loan from the RUS (rural utilities service), a branch of the USDA.  As this project rolls out all residents of the community will have access to high speed internet connections and if they choose voice grade phone service through a provider such as Vonage.  We expect to have this project in construction by early this summer and should have the service available to all community members by early 2013.

The network being built is a fiber optic network that is capable of providing bandwidth speeds of up to 1 gig per connection though most residences and small businesses will need much less.  As currently being designed the Tribe will own and operate the network but will not provide the actual services (voice and data).  The customer will actually purchase those services from another company.  This allows the Tribe to concentrate on the network and leave the customer service function to a third party.  This is being done to insure that the services are made available through a company that is comfortable dealing with customer issues and it allows the Tribe to concentrate on maintaining the network.  The precise offerings will be determined by the service provider but at the very least it is expected that high speed internet access will be at the core of any offering.  Once that is provided the customer can then use the connection to set up a voice over Internet (VoIP) phone service, download movies and in some cases watch network TV.  All these options become available once a high speed connection is present.
After the network is up and running there will be informational sessions scheduled so that residents will be able to maximize their usage of the services.  With a high speed connecting in the home or small business a host of options become available like home automation, security, TV over the Internet (over the top video) and video and music  streaming.  While it is unlikely that all these services will be attractive to all residents it seems likely that at least some of them will appeal to a majority of customers.

The five computer centers are ready to be opened in Akwesasne.

Contacts:

Jason Hall

Project Manager
Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP)
Phone: (518) 358-2272 ext. 222

Anthony George

Project Manager
Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP)
Phone: (518) 358-2272 ext. 240

Broadband Technology Opportunies Program project information

Post Date: May 14, 2012

Congratulations to Tabby Bearshield! Tabby won the Kindle Fire.

Congratulations to Dea Boots! Dea won the iPad 3.

Niawen to all who attended.

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Post Date: May 02, 2012

Thanks to all who attended, it was great to see all the community support of the project. As with any technology, sometimes things go wrong just when you need them most, like my online media presentation last night during the grand opening. I wanted to use a new Prezi presentation software...

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Post Date: March 28, 2012

Course begins on April 9, 2012

4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Eight weeks, three sessions a week

Casino Human Resources Administration Building, (921 State Route 37)

 

Computing Basics - hardware, software, and operating systems

Applications - basic Word, Excel, and generic program...

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Post Date: January 24, 2012

Public Computer Centers

Akwesasne Boys & Girls Club - available Monday to Friday 9am to 2pm

Akwesasne Library - available Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm, Wednesday 9am to 6pm, Saturday 10am to 2pm

Akwesasne Senior Center - available Monday to Friday 8am to 4pm

Akwesasne Employment...

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Post Date: January 04, 2012

SRMT is offering digital literacy training to the Akwesasne community through all five public computer centers being developed in Akwesasne. The locations of the public computer centers being developed are:

• Akwesasne Boys & Girls Club - the computers and SMART board are installed. All...

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Post Date: September 30, 2011

Please check back soon as we will be adding new content to our blog.

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