Nunavut Housing Corporation, other landlords getting in the way of Starlink access

When Starlink's high-speed internet arrived in Nunavut people across the territory rejoiced, but some renters are now realizing the territory's largest landlords are obstructing access to the long-awaited service. 

The Nunavut Housing Corporation (NHC) manages more than 1,700 government staff housing units and nearly 5,700 public housing units. Northview is a major residential landlord in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. Neither landlord will let tenants install Starlink satellite dishes without permission, and neither has a policy yet for those dishes.

EPLS Group of Companies owns several properties in Rankin Inlet and Arviat in Nunavut and it's not allowing tenants to put up Starlink dishes right now. 

Starlink is the low-Earth orbit satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk's spacecraft and rocket launch company, SpaceX.

It promises users in remote communities faster speeds and a terabyte of data for $140 CAD a month, plus $759 for the 30-by-51-centimetre dish, which users can install themselves.

Last month, Starlink announced it had expanded coverage to all of the three territories and Alaska. 

In the North, where the internet can be notoriously slow and inconsistent, IT experts predict that Starlink and other low-Earth orbit internet providers will become increasingly popular.

Jonah McCavour, who lives in Nunavut government staff housing in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, said internet in the community is "absolutely atrocious." It's slow and suffers from frequent outages. 

McCavour called Starlink a "life-changing service for us in Nunavut," which will make it much easier for residents to run online businesses, do school online, and videoconference with healthcare providers in Iqaluit or the South. 

"Access to high-speed internet in 2022 is absolutely a fundamental human right," he said.

It's also why he was so frustrated when his hopes of switching to Starlink were quashed. 

His building's owner, EPLS, denied McCavour's request to put up a Starlink satellite dish, citing the provision of his lease agreement with NHC that states the tenant not make any "alterations or additions" to the premises.

Chief operating officer Derrick Webster confirmed that EPLS isn't letting tenants in its buildings install Starlink dishes yet. 

Allowing one tenant to put up a dish opens the door to all tenants, and "allowing tenants to install their own equipment all over your building is very damaging to the envelope and creates a lot of other issues," he said.