Merci, Monsieur le President. My questions are for the Minister of Infrastructure, who is responsible for government information technology services.
A year ago the Minister promised a solution for education authorities' internet bandwidth problems through a request for proposal which was to be issued last winter. Can the Minister provide us with a brief update on the status of that work and tell us how close we are to increasing internet bandwidth available to Yellowknife school authorities? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'll give a brief update on where we're at with the project.
So TSC, Technology Service Centre, oversees the GNWT network connectivity provided to GNWT schools. TSC is currently rolling out the new digital communication network, which is the DCN, to GNWT schools across all the communities here in the Northwest Territories. This contract was awarded to Northwestel in September of 2021, and this work is currently underway.
To date, there has been completed approximately some the work that's been completed to date is about 50 percent of the communities. This includes hardware upgrades that, in most communities, will increase the bandwidth available to GNWT offices and schools. The current schedule estimates that the balance of the work should be completed within two to three months. Community service by satellite technology will unfortunately continue to have limitations, including the amount of bandwidth available overall.
So to mitigate this lower bandwidth availability, the school internet traffic leverages bandwidth that is not part of the GNWT network, and this will allow for better performance overall. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that. There's some new information there that I wasn't aware of, but. I noted that in my statement that problems of inadequate internet access continue to be raised with us as Yellowknife MLAs and that they raised this territorially and nationally. So can the Minister tell us what specific solutions and funding is going to be made available to fix this problem here in Yellowknife right now? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, under the new DCN contract, the TSC will be able to leverage new satellite technology which we call Low Earth Orbit, otherwise known as LEO, as it becomes available within the North for GNWT schools. So again, this is expected to be completed in the next two to three months. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker, and I want to thank the Minister for that. I understood that Low Earth Orbit technology really is a benefit for more remote communities, not like Yellowknife. So I want to ask again, the Minister, what is this DCN rollout by Northwestel going to do to improve internet access for Yellowknife school authorities. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd be happy to provide the Member with more details on exactly how this would roll out. I think, you know, it would take up a lot of our time here today, and we still have lots of Members that want to speak. So thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Final Supplementary. Member for Frame Lake.
Merci, Monsieur le President. I want to thank the Minister for that because neither one of us are techies. You can tell just from the tone of the questions and the answers. So I look forward to getting more information from the Minister. But what I'm really looking for is a clear commitment that the internet access problem for Yellowknife school authorities, students, and families here in Yellowknife is going to get fixed. So can the Minister tell us when that problem is going to get fixed here in Yellowknife? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Member's last question is a really important one. So I'm just going to make sure I speak slow when I'm going through this.
In Yellowknife, the provision of internet services is a shared responsibility with school boards as the Yellowknife schools manage their own networks and hardware within each of the schools, including the nonGNWT internet connections as they have purchased and installed within the schools. The TSC has no visibility into how these separate internet connections are used, managed, or how its usage is tracked.
The TSC provides Yellowknife schools with internet services through existing GNWT enterprise internet contract. So any increases to their bandwidth would be through the existing contract.
I hope I'm making sense here, Mr. Speaker. Capacity under this contract was increased in September from 1 gigabyte to 2 gigabytes, and we have the ability to increase to 5 gigabytes under the existing contract when additional capacity is required.
Currently, our understanding is the 2 gigabytes provided to the Yellowknife schools is not fully utilized. It is not the case. If that's not the case, Mr. Speaker, I ask the YK schools to reach out to Education, Culture and Employment, and also Infrastructure, to increase that bandwidth. The TSC has also provided ECE with turbo sticks, Chromebooks, to be able to facilitate online learning. ECE and I'm looking at my colleague here manages the distribution among those in the various schools. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Monfwi.
