Ontera is a telecommunications company in Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. It is a subsidiary of the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission

Ontario Northland Transportation Commission

The Ontario Northland Transportation Commission , or simply Ontario Northland, is a Crown agency of the Government of Ontario.ONTC operates the following public services in Northern Ontario:...

, an "operational enterprise" of the Government of Ontario

Government of Ontario

The Government of Ontario refers to the provincial government of the province of Ontario, Canada. Its powers and structure are set out in the Constitution Act, 1867....

.

Ontera began as Ontario Northland Telecommunications, and was the exclusive provider of long-distance in Northeastern Ontario until the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approved long-distance competition in 2000. The name was changed to O.N.Tel Inc. in the 1990s, then changed its trading name to O.N.Telcom in 2000, and finally Ontera in 2004.

Ontera provides local telephone service in the Northern Ontario

Northern Ontario

Northern Ontario is a region of the Canadian province of Ontario which lies north of Lake Huron , the French River and Lake Nipissing. The region has a land area of 802,000 km2 and constitutes 87% of the land area of Ontario, although it contains only about 6% of the population...

 towns of Bear Island

Bear Island (Lake Temagami)

Bear Island is an island in Lake Temagami of Northeastern Ontario, Canada. With an area of , it is the seconed largest island in Lake Temagami after Temagami Island...

, Iroquois Falls

Iroquois Falls, Ontario

Iroquois Falls is a small town in Northern Ontario, Canada, with a population of 4,729 in the Canada 2006 Census.The town centre lies just off of Hwy 11 on the banks the Abitibi River, west of Lake Abitibi. Timmins, one of the largest cities in northern Ontario is approximately to the west...

, Marten River

Marten River, Ontario

Marten River is an unincorporated hamlet located in the municipality of Temagami, in the District of Nipissing, Ontario, Canada. The latest census 2005 puts the town population at 87...

, Moosonee

Moosonee, Ontario

Moosonee is a town in northern Ontario, Canada, on the Moose River approximately south of James Bay. It is considered as "the Gateway to the Arctic" and has Ontario's only saltwater port...

, Moose Factory

Moose Factory, Ontario

Moose Factory is a community in the Cochrane District, Ontario, Canada. It is on Moose Factory Island, near the mouth of the Moose River, which is at the southern end of James Bay. It was the first English-speaking settlement in Ontario and the second Hudson's Bay Company post to be set up in North...

 and Temagami

Temagami, Ontario

Temagami, formerly spelt as Timagami, is a region and a municipality in northeastern Ontario, Canada, in the District of Nipissing with Lake Temagami at its heart....

, and also offers long-distance services in most of area code 705

Area code 705

Area codes 705 and 249 are telephone area codes that covers most of northeastern and central Ontario in Canada. 705 was initially created in 1957 by the North American Numbering Plan from portions of the area covered by area codes 613 and 519...

.

Ontera owns and operates an extensive fibre optic telecommunications network throughout most of Northeastern Ontario.

Ontera provides customer premise LAN

Län

Län and lääni refer to the administrative divisions used in Sweden and previously in Finland. The provinces of Finland were abolished on January 1, 2010....

, VoIP and Internet security systems, DSL, fibre optic and wireless data

Data

The term data refers to qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which...

 services. Also, Ontera resells Bell

Bell Canada

Bell Canada is a major Canadian telecommunications company. Including its subsidiaries such as Bell Aliant, Northwestel, Télébec, and NorthernTel, it is the incumbent local exchange carrier for telephone and DSL Internet services in most of Canada east of Manitoba and in the northern territories,...

 and NorthernTel

NorthernTel

NorthernTel is a telephone company in Ontario, Canada.NorthernTel began in April 1905 in New Liskeard, Ontario, as the Temiskaming Telephone Company. It grew by buying other regional telephone providers and became the Northern Telephone Company Ltd. in 1928...

 DSL and local telephone services, and Persona cable internet in order to offer "bundled" all-inclusive communications packages to its customers.

In September 2008, Ontera announced plans to install a ring network

Ring network

A ring network is a network topology in which each node connects to exactly two other nodes, forming a single continuous pathway for signals through each node - a ring...

, to strengthen network reliability

Reliability (computer networking)

In computer networking, a reliable protocol is one that provides reliability properties with respect to the delivery of data to the intended recipient, as opposed to an unreliable protocol, which does not provide notifications to the sender as to the delivery of transmitted data.A reliable...

, which was completed by spring 2009.

External links

• Ontera website
• Ontario Northland website