The award which is given annually to a municipality that most demonstrates the innovative use of technology, was presented to Frank Mayhood, the City’s information technology manager by Gerry Matte, MISA-BC’s president, in front of 250 municipal delegates, and technology vendors attending the annual conference in Kelowna.

“The Kamloops Community Network is innovative because it provides low-cost, high speed telecommunications infrastructure to the citizens and businesses of Kamloops,” says Kamloops mayor Terry Lake. “Few municipalities have this service, and Kamloops is the first to form a partnership with incumbent service provider, Telus,” says Lake.

The Kamloops Community Network is a three-phase project. Phase I has built a fibre optic network that connects 37 locations for the City, School District 73, BCNet (for Thompson Rivers University), the Province of British Columbia, Thompson-Nicola Regional District, and On Call Internet Services.

“The City is already providing voice and data services for 14 sites from McArthur Island to Valleyview Fire Hall over the KCN,” says Mayhood. “The school district and TRU have active applications for server consolidation, distance learning and research networking.”

Phase I has established a meeting place or open transit exchange, called KAMTX that creates a whole new model of how telecommunications services can be bought and sold. Internet service providers from TELUS, Bell, OnCall, and BigPipe (Shaw Cable) are already connected to the KAMTX. The nation wide ultra high speed CA*Net 4 is also available at the transit exchange. Phase I still has one last piece of cable to install on Westsyde Road before the final three sites will be connected.

The KCN backbone will soon be used by the City and OnCall Internet Services to support the recently approved WiFi wireless service called ISP-in-a-Box. Anyone with a WiFi enabled device, which includes almost all laptops, will be able to purchase internet connectivity while on the move almost anywhere in Kamloops.

This is the third time in less than a decade that Kamloops has received MISA’s Spirit of Innovation Award. The City won the award in 1999 for capturing data to show underground utility lines in 3-D, and in 2001 for website design.

For more information please contact: Frank Mayhood, Information Technology Manager at (250) 828-3441 or itmgr@kamloops.ca or Ms. Lee Morris, CEO of Tourism Kamloops at (250) 372-8000 or lee@tourismkamloops.com.

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