Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Going Wireless in the Wilderness

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 10:18:45 -0400

Going Wireless in the Wilderness
By Charles Mandel
July 8, 2003

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
(http://www.tundrabuggytours.com/) 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 (http://www.pathcom.ca/) 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
(http://www.polarbearsalive.org/), 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.

The roaming cam will follow Waterman as she carries out her research. "We're
a very transparent organization,'' Buchanan said. "Very clean and
aboveboard, so we're going to let everyone watch and see what the
researchers are doing."

In earlier research, Waterman noted that large modified vehicles now carry
tourists to areas of the tundra where none had visited before. She
speculates that the bears might behave differently around the tourist camps
than they do in other areas.

The tourist areas are generally dominated by male bears, with females
reluctant to approach because their cubs could be harmed by aggressive
males. However, Waterman writes that the camps have begun to attract
females, with potentially lethal consequences for the cubs.

Waterman also will engage in question-and-answer sessions with a number of
students over the Internet, with kids in programs at zoos in Chicago,
Baltimore and Winnipeg, Manitoba, participating.

"The idea is to hopefully stimulate young kids into taking up Arctic studies
or at least take up being a scientist or biologist," Buchanan said. "We've
all had one teacher or person who's inspired us in life. We hope that Jane
might be able to do some of that."

Gunter said Tundra Buggy Tours has noticed a trend over the past couple of
years: More and more of their visitors tote laptops and digital cameras. The
Wi-Fi network will take advantage of that technology, letting tourists
upload their images of polar bears onto the company's website.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59546,00.html

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