We’ve heard a lot in recent years about Google Maps providing all sorts of details about Antarctica and the various South Pole expeditions that went down there. Presumably there was something about how people don’t fall off the end of the world from being upside down.
Now, Google is trying to get a grip on what’s going on in the far North. Google’s Street View team is in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada and they’re riding around on a tricycle on purpose.
From the CBC:
Karen Tuxen-Bettman, the project leader, said they will use a tricycle equipped with seven cameras pointing in different directions and pedal the hamlet’s dirt roads.
“As the biker pedals along it snaps images periodically and when taken together it forms a 360 degree panorama or a bubble,” she said.
“This tricycle has never been above the 60th degree parallel. It’s very unique bringing this equipment to the Arctic.”
Residents aren’t super stressed about Google spying on their home internet connections:
This is the first time the service has come to Nunavut, where internet access is only available via satellite instead of a fibre optic link. There is no 3G or 4G service in the territory.
The territory’s telecommunications infrastructure is also somewhat vulnerable.
Last year, a technical problem with Telesat’s Anik F2 satellite cut off long-distance phone service and internet service to all of Nunavut and some communities in the Northwest Territories and Yukon for 12 hours. Planes were also grounded in Nunavut as weather information could not be communicated between communities.
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