CANAIRE releases outstanding Five Year Report, up for Renewal Mandate in 2012 with Government of Canada
The Ottawa based CANAIRE, Canada's Advanced Research and Innovation Network has released the results of its program evaluation over the last five years and is up for re-funding from the Government of Canada. While you can download the full the report here by Nordicity and Bytown Consulting, I'll go through some key takeaways.
CANAIRE operates a high speed network that is thousands of times faster than the Internet that covers 19,000 kilometeres around the world. As a result, it allows for world-class research and discovery at universities, colleges, research hopsitals, government labs and private research facilities.
The report outlines how CANIAIRE has enabled extensive use of the network, allowed for improved access, allowed for Canada to become a leader in research networking and that the user community has unanimously indicated that their needs for high-speed, high-bandwith, low-latency networking will grow.
President and CEO of CANAIRE Mark Roman says: "This report clearly demonstrates that CANAIRE is fundamental digital infastructure that supports innovation and discovery, key components of Canada's digital economy".
The CANAIRE network is one built on optical fibre, which allows for much faster speeds than the Internet we use on a daily basis in our homes, and as it stands, there is much potential for companies to plant optical fibre throughout Canada as was mentioned at the Canada 3.0 conference back in May.
The network has connection points in most major cities across Canada, and even expanded to include a Nordic IceLink connection that connected North America with Greenland, Iceland, London, Amsterdam and Copenhagen while indirectly connecting to the rest of Western Europe and the rest of the world by 2008.
From 2006 to 2011, the network has connected 89 universities, up from 80, 101 colleges, up from around 50, 40 more research centres, 15 more cultural institutions, expanded the network from 40 to 80 countries. There are also over a thousand companies participating.
The network may ambitiously focus on connecting K-12 schools over the next five years should they get re-funding beyond 2012. It will also continue the great strides CANAIRE is making in studying the oceans under the sea, monitoring Canada's vast forest resources, the environment, space and the world in real-time which is also having an impact on the medical community.
As CANAIRE is up for renewal in the face of real fiscal challenges ahead of the 2012 Federal Budget to be determined by Stephen Harper's majority government, you can find the mandate renewal section on their website here, which has information and tools to make it easy for users to send messages of support to the appropriate government decision-makers.
