Going Wireless in the Wilderness

Source: Wired

Wi-Fi networks, fairly common in North America's urban centers, have extended their habitat far into Canada's frozen north.

There, local tourism operator Tundra Buggy Tours is setting up a four-kilometer-radius wireless network that will let people watch the famed polar bears of Churchill, Manitoba, over the Internet.

Approximately 10,000 tourists descend each year on Churchill, an isolated outpost in northeast Manitoba with a population approaching 1,000, and turn it into a boomtown as they flood onto the tundra to watch the massive bears wrestle and play.

Of the dozens of tour operators plying the frigid northern barrens, Tundra Buggy Tours is the oldest, having taken tourists out for the past 24 years.

Three years ago, the company added a Polar Bear Cam, a feature that proved surprisingly popular. In fact, according to Tundra Buggy spokesman John Gunter, last year about 500 people paid $25 each to have a subscription to the cam.

Previously, the cam was attached to the Tundra Buggy Lodge, a train-like series of cars that are towed out to the tundra and left in place for a week or more. Typically, well-heeled tourists pay anywhere from $4,500 to $4,900 to sit inside the lodge and wait for the bears to approach.

Tundra's new Wi-Fi network will allow the company to capitalize on the success of the cam, letting it roam to where the action is taking place.

Alberta's Pathcom Wireless is providing the Wi-Fi infrastructure, including image capture, encoding, wireless network and satellite Internet connection. Gunter said Pathcom, a company experienced with setting up wireless networks for oil companies, has reassured them the cold won't affect the network.

The network also will play an important role in both education and research surrounding the bears. Tundra has partnered with Polar Bears International, a nonprofit conservation organization devoted to the animals and situated in the unlikely location of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Robert Buchanan, president of Polar Bears International, dryly explained: "I kid around and say that during the last Ice Age polar bears did roam in that area."

As it turns out, the woman who handles the organization's administrative operations lives in Baton Rouge, so to keep costs down the nonprofit decided to make its headquarters in the southern state.

Polar Bears International not only looks after the Wi-Fi video streaming and image serving, but is leading both distance-education and research initiatives. The nonprofit is sending Florida's Jane Waterman, a well-known bear expert who has spent several years studying the mammals, to Churchill, where she'll research the impact of eco-tourism on the animals.