Increasing dependence on US infrastructure in Canada's remote and isolated territories: the case of Nunavut

International audience Nunavut is Canada's largest and northernmost territory. It is also the only one relying entirely on geostationary satellites for its telecommunications. Prior to the deregulation of telecommunications in Canada in 1992, the entire infrastructure in Nunavut was owned and c...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Rabouam, Célestine
Other Authors: Institut français de géopolitique (IFG ), Centre de recherches et d'analyses géopolitiques (CRAG), Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis (UP8)-Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis (UP8)-Centre d’études russes, caucasiennes, est-européennes et centrasiatiques (CERCEC), École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Centre Géopolitique de la Datasphère, Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis (UP8), Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis - Département de Géographie, GEODE, RIPE NCC
Format: Conference Object
Language:English
Published: HAL CCSD 2021
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Online Access:https://hal.science/hal-04452965
Description
Summary:International audience Nunavut is Canada's largest and northernmost territory. It is also the only one relying entirely on geostationary satellites for its telecommunications. Prior to the deregulation of telecommunications in Canada in 1992, the entire infrastructure in Nunavut was owned and controlled either by the state or by the trio of Telesat (satellite operator), BCE (formerly Bell Canada) and its subsidiary NorthwesTel, all supported by state subsidies. In the Canadian Arctic, these private actors own the infrastructure and catalyze federal funding, which allows them to decide on routing policies for most of the networks, following a competitive logic that reinforces Canadian dependence on American infrastructure. The Nunavut case study allows us to analyze how satellite constellations such as Starlink on the Canadian market disrupt both the interconnection logic of the actors traditionally responsible for data routing and the power relations between the latter and the various governance bodies in the Canadian Arctic territories.