- The U.S. government is taking the first steps toward
the construction of a 2,000-kilometre, fibre-optic network across Antarctica,
a project of immense engineering challenges that, if completed, could lead
to new research opportunities in the world's coldest and most remote region.
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- A fibre-optic link would also improve health and safety
conditions for researchers stationed there.
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- The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has asked
telecommunications companies interested in working on the project to prepare
a feasibility study to build a fibre-optic link from the South Pole to
research stations at the edge of Antarctica. Representatives of Alcatel
SA of France, General Dynamics Corp. of Falls Church, Va., and 3U Technologies
LLC of Conroe, Tex., are among the companies that have expressed interest
in the project.
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- The research station at the Pole, where about 50 people
are stationed year round, has spotty telecommunications services because
satellites pass over the Pole infrequently and those that do are often
older satellites whose orbits have decayed.
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- A handful of research stations on the edge of the continent,
though, can be seen by modern communications satellites at all times.
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- The NSF hopes to run a fibre-optic cable, capable of
carrying Internet and voice traffic, from the Pole to one of these stations.
The estimated cost of the project is about $250-million (U.S.).
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- The link is not likely to be active until the end of
the decade, but when -- or if -- it does work, it will give those at the
South Pole 24-hour-a-day telephone service with the same kind of quality
and reliability that most Canadians in rural areas now enjoy. It will also
make possible some new types of communication applications -- such as video
conferencing -- that promise to improve safety conditions for researchers.
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- "That's a major concern for us, the safety of the
participants," said Andre Roy, Denver-based project manager for Raytheon
Polar Services Corp.
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- Raytheon Polar Services, a unit of Raytheon Co. of Lexington,
Mass., is the private sector contractor hired by the NSF to manage the
project.
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- In 1999, Dr. Jerri Nielsen, a U.S. doctor stationed at
the Pole, discovered, through a biopsy she was forced to perform on herself,
that she had a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer. She survived,
but doctors say had they been able to diagnose her condition earlier using
video conferencing and telemedicine, she might have been better off.
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- In 2000, another doctor stationed at the base, Dr. Ronald
Shemenski, developed pancreatitis in the middle of the winter; he was airlifted
out in a dramatic rescue by some Canadian pilots.
- Basic Internet access at the Pole has been possible for
several years, but the connection speed is slow, making it suitable only
for e-mail and small data files. A fibre-optic link is a high-speed connection
that would allow large amounts of data and video files to be transmitted
directly from the Pole. Such a link would mean that researchers around
the world could get real-time access to some of the data collected daily.
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- Because of the environmental and geophysical conditions
there, the Pole has become an important centre for research in astronomy,
climate control and geology.
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- Scientists, though, wonder whether such a link may even
be feasible from an engineering standpoint. The link would have to stretch
across the top of thousands of kilometres of constantly shifting crevass-riven
ice. Engineers would also have to contend with an environment where the
temperature does not rise above minus 50 for many months of the year --
so cold that jet fuel turns into jelly.
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- It won't even be enough to lay the fibre-optic cable.
Engineers will have to figure out how to get to various points on the line
if repairs need to be made.
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- "How to maintain that fibre will be an interesting
challenge," said Bill St. Arnaud, senior director for network projects
at Canarie Inc., the Ottawa-based non-profit group building Canada's advanced
research networks.
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- "The ice surface is moving all the time. It's one
big ice sheet."
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- David Akin is national business and technology correspondent
for CTV News and a contributing writer to The Globe and Mail.
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