ARC - Applications for Rural Communities
Project Overview
ARC is unique and important to Canadian industry, since it is focused
specifically on rural information needs and accessibility. ARC involves the
development and commercialization of an integrated suite of products and
services for rural communities. The overall objective of the project is
the development of applications and products aimed at providing solutions
to the needs of both service providers and end-users. The proposed products
will be useful to both rural and urban communities, by enabling universal
access to the benefits of advanced communications technologies.
The work will be undertaken by a strong, strategic alliance of organizations
led by a private sector consortium consisting of:
The balance of the ARC Alliance is comprised of the following associates:
The ARC project was first conceptualized during the development of the
Integrated Rural Delivery Network (IRDN), a CANARIE TD2 project.
The IRDN provides a cost-effective means of bringing the benefits of
broadband access to information sources to communities where the existing
communications infrastructure imposes prohibitive bandwidth and/or cost
restrictions. Such restrictions are widespread in rural North America and
elsewhere in the world and this situation is predicted to persist for
a significant period of time. This presents the IRDN with not only a
commercial opportunity, but also an opportunity to make an important social
contribution.
Using a common user interface, and with the capability for dynamic bandwidth
sharing, the IRDN can handle voice, data, images, graphics and compressed
video. Testing has included applications for business, telemedicine, distance
education and environmental data management. The IRDN is migratory to
high-bandwidth facilities and can be a gateway to other networks such as
CA*net.
Although the primary focus of the IRDN is to provide broadband access to
rural communities, a key benefit of such a network will be the sharing of
information and resources between urban centres and non-urban communities.
The IRDN was developed by a consortium composed of:
Whereas the IRDN provides a prototype for more efficient information delivery
mechanisms (bandwidth sharing, distributed control, common user interface)
and low-level applications (voice, data, integrated voice and data) applied
to rural environments, the ARC project provides a natural extension to the
IRDN and focuses on higher-level applications such as information discovery,
on-line access to information sources and remote connectivity for telework
applications. The ARC project seeks to:
Project Modules
The ARC project is organized into eight specific modules as follows:
Each module will be led by one of the consortium members and will be executed by a project team made up of members who are relevant to a specific module, augmented, where desirable, by consortium associates who bring strength to a particular task.
While each module has its own project team, several members and technologies are common to several tasks. For example, the IRDN is a common access system, Compusult Limited's CIDAS system will be the basis of the data management component of several applications modules and the security needs of several tasks will be met by certified, readily available encryption technologies. Additionally, there are functional correlations between several modules; for example, between the environmental and economic modules. The common theme among all of the modules is the enhancement of community living through the provision of electronic access and applications.
The development of each of module involved the following common elements:
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