by Tom Sasvari
GORE BAY—The general manager of LAMBAC, who has been helping the Town of Gore Bay in obtaining upgraded internet service says the announcement that Leepfrog Telecom is installing internet lines in the town is a good news story.
“This is great news,” stated Mike Addison, last Friday. “I have been working with George (Chriss) and Leepfrog Telecom for about six months. I’ve been his boots on the ground, helping him to learn the lay of the land to connect with business owners and residents and to help in finding locations for the towers so they and customers get the best bang for their buck. It is excellent news they are coming to Gore Bay.”
“Actually, our cutover (getting internet connection) is happening today,” Mr. Chriss told The Expositor last Friday. “We’re hoping to arrive next week to put the network together.”
“It will be terrific for the community and local businesses,” said Mr. Chriss. “They will have access to world markets. And it will be terrific for residents too. Especially for all those people working from home the service they will receive will be far better.”
Mr. Chriss said that Leepfrog is currently servicing Iron Bridge, Temagami, Prince Township and just connected to the Mississagi First Nation within the past two weeks and are hopeful of connecting to Blind River the next week or two after that.
“Our goal is to do a lot of communities along the Highway 17 corridor, and for those interested on Manitoulin Island,” said Mr. Chriss.
“We did our first wireless connection in 2020 in Iron Bridge,” said Mr. Chriss. “We can resell internet for companies like Bell, Telus, Shaw, Eastlink at lower rates in major cities.” Leepfrog, which is putting in and self funding internet in Gore Bay, “found out about Gore Bay and Manitoulin Island through the work carried out by Blue Sky Network and Susan Church. They put out a request for interest tender two years ago and we submitted an RFI. Gore Bay and Manitoulin Island made sense to us to explore, because when she put out the RFI tender, we noted how bad internet services are on Manitoulin. It is a tough area to provide coverage because of the tree canopy coverage on the island. However, we use TV white space technology than can penetrate tree canopy much better than other technologies, which will mean in this case for Gore Bay, calls won’t be lost because of tree canopy issues.”
“We will be putting towers on two buildings in the Town of Gore Bay,” said Mr. Chriss. “We will have internet installed on one and it will shoot to the other building to connect the community.”
For residential customers the lowest package for hookup with Leepfrog will be 15 mbs download 5 mbps upload for $59 per month and the top package will be 200 mbps down and 20 up for $180 monthly. There is also a $20 equipment rental fee and one time activation cost.
“With what customers are paying for now in Gore Bay, they will get substantially higher internet speeds with our system,” said Mr. Chriss.
For more information and to pre-register you can go online to www.leepfrogtelecom.com
