Next Generation Network Services

Axia FibreNet-making a direct, reliable, secure connection possible.

The Challenge

The Athabasca oil sands are large deposits of bitumen or extremely heavy crude oil, located in northeastern Alberta. The Athabasca deposit is the largest known reservoir of crude bitumen in the world and the largest of three major oil sands deposits in Alberta.

Oil and gas exploration, development and production companies have large-scale operations setup in these northern parts of the province, while their corporate head offices are located in Calgary, Alberta. Due to the remote nature of these locations, these operations are challenged by low quality bandwidth where connectivity is very expensive. In order to run their operations it is imperative that the remote offices and work camps in the oil sands are able to access the same servers and cloud based technology as the downtown corporate head office.

The Solution

Axia works with oil and gas companies of all sizes to transport mission critical data over a pure fibre infrastructure from the offices and camps in the oil sands directly back to the corporate head office in Calgary. To achieve this, Axia has developed custom solutions that connect the project offices, EPC offices and the camp all to a high-performing, dedicated network to serve both the network needs of the company and any web service needs of the project.

The Result

Because of this direct pure fibre connection from the corporate head office to the remote offices, Axia FibreNet is able to provide high bandwidth, mission critical data transport that enables these sites to connect with the head office and use communications systems such as VoIP, video conferencing and other web based services. This fibre technology is also utilized in a number of high priority initiatives including unified communications, disaster recovery, data back up, and environmental monitoring – all over the same network.

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Axia FibreNet enhances digital learning for generations to come

Discovery Education

The education system is relying more and more on technology to enhance the learning experience for the next generation. Lesson plans are being delivered online while video and online content are becoming fundamental contributors to student learning, giving them a firsthand look at what is going on in our ever-changing world.

Discovery Education has been fundamental to transforming the classroom, empowering teachers and captivating students. Their goal is to provide high quality, dynamic, digital content to school districts, transforming teaching and creating more captivated learning.

The Challenge

Golden Hills School Division No. 75 encompasses a large geographical area across rural mid-eastern Alberta and serves approximately 6500 students. Because of their rural location and poor Internet connection, the district found that when someone tried to download Discovery content over the Internet at school it was very slow. In one school the video content would buffer for 22 minutes before the teacher was able to show it to their class. In order to solve this, they decided to host the content on a local caching server, downloading all of the Discovery content where it would sit in the school or school district. The challenge was that the school was now paying for the Discovery license and paying to build and maintain the servers resulting in a cost of $3000-$5000 per year.

The Solution

In order to significantly improve the previous internet delivery model and lower costs, Axia came up with another, Alberta specific solution. Working with the school, Axia set up a server sitting in RackForce, Canada’s largest enterprise cloud service provider where we could host all of the Discovery content. This content was then accessed over the SuperNet to the schools, bypassing the school district’s infrastructure. This meant that the cloud service provided the performance of Discovery’s content without having to purchase and maintain infrastructure in the data centre. In addition, district Internet bandwidth was not being consumed when students or teachers accessed Discovery content.

The byproduct and benefits of having each district connected to the network is that they can work together as a group of districts and create a collation of buyers who can then negotiate a licence with Discovery. Axia’s SuperNet enabled these districts to form one buying group and instead of representing 10,000 students, representing 100,000 students, lowering the price down from $3 a student to $2 a student.

The Result

Golden Hills School Division No. 75 went from paying between $3,000-$5,000 per year hosting and maintaining their own server to a cost of $1000 per year to access Discovery media from RackForce. The school division also recognized significant bulk discounts for the Discovery license.

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Axia FibreNet - making it possible for carriers to connect Alberta

The Challenge

Alberta is a fast growing, affluent part of Canada that spans vast geographical areas. In order to provide Internet service to rural residences and businesses that do not penalize a carrier, a network was needed to reach all areas of the province. Customers value access to high bandwidth media and content such as Netflix and other OTT (Over the Top) services more than they do voice services. Even though carriers do not profit from these services, they are expected to provide a superior user experience when their subscribers use them. The ongoing rise in OTT players has created a bandwidth bottleneck in the network both in last mile delivery and backhaul to major centres such as Calgary.

The Solution

NETAGO provides a gateway to the Internet for Alberta residents and workers. They offer reliable Internet connection and assess to new services over the Internet. NETAGO recently started a rollout of a LTE 4G Wireless Solution to address the last mile delivery requirement. However current backhaul products were not scalable in a way where they could control their costs. With FibreNet, Axia can offer a next generation network transport service that allows NETAGO to scale bandwidth where and when they need it.

The Result

Currently, NETAGO customers are serviced with a leading edge wireless solution, backhauled with a scalable fibre network, which will insure the quality experience their customers demand and deserve.

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