Bell Canada, with help from Nortel, launches Project Chapleau, hoping to create a blueprint for other small towns

In a living lab in a small town in northeastern Canada, Nortel Networks and Bell Canada are learning not only how to use technology in a rural setting, but also how residents will use the technology once it is deployed.

Project Chapleau, which was launched in early November 2005 and will run for 14 months, is exploring how the roughly 2800 residents of Chapleau, Canada, make use of broadband technology and applications once they are available via upgraded fiber facilities, a wireless mesh wide area network (WAN) and wireless local area network. The results so far have been impressive and educational.

“This isn't a technology trial,” he said. “We want to see how the people use the technology, what applications they use and how they use them.”

For example, a woman who lives just outside the reach of the wireless mesh WAN drives her car into town every day, bringing her laptop, so she can surf the Web, said Chris Merritt, Nortel's vice president for the BCE account.

The goal is to develop a potential model or business case that the Canadian government can use to determine how it can structure support of similar networks in other rural communities, Merritt said.

“Where natural economic forces don't take care of communities like Chapleau, the government may have to step in,” he said. “If we can show that the cost of the networks is dropping, and it's cheaper to operate, and because of the mobility aspect, it would encourage a higher rate of adoption to use a wireless mesh network, then the government can understand the shifting break-even business case.”

Nortel and BCE didn't just bring technology to town and dump it in people's laps, however. The companies trained teachers in the elementary and two high schools (one English, one French) to develop Computers on Wheels platforms that bring computers into the classroom.

They have worked with the local hospital, which has only one doctor and four nurse practitioners, to develop a remote monitoring system for diabetics to track their blood sugar levels more effectively, and they took over a former bank building to create the Chapleau Innovation Centre, where local residents can learn more about applications that capitalize on the new broadband capabilities.

Before all this was done, the two partners replaced DS-3 transport into Chapleau with a new optical network, deployed 30 broadband wireless access points around town and provided fiber feeds to the schools and hospital facilities.

Because of its remote location — about 190 miles east of Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., — distance learning and telemedicine have special importance in Chapleau, Merritt said. “The idea was not to bring bleeding-edge technology here, but to use the technology we have to make a difference in people's lives,” he said.

Unfortunately, natural economic forces don't always take care of communities like Chapleau.

To that end, the partners have invested in bringing researchers from Laurentian University, the University of Toronto and others into Chapleau to study how broadband networks and applications might change life in town.