Sponsor Feature: Northwestel, Behind every moment: Connecting the 2026 Arctic Winter Games

Behind every moment: Connecting the 2026 Arctic Winter Games

When a young speed skater crosses the finish line at the Canada Games Centre, her time flashes on the scoreboard instantly. Back home, her family sees it at the exact same moment. No one thinks about the network that made it possible.

That's exactly the point.

"Success for us is being unnoticed," says Scott Wylie, AVP of Sales at Northwestel. "Everything just works the way it's supposed to.”

But making connectivity invisible takes months of very visible work.

The challenge

The 2026 Arctic Winter Games in Whitehorse spans multiple venues across the city. Each needs enough bandwidth for live scoring, streaming, and hundreds of people sharing at once.

"You’re not just connecting buildings,” explains Antonio Legarreta, a Northwestel Account Architect. "You're connecting a community.”

It's a puzzle that requires fitting different technologies together seamlessly.

Fibre where it reaches, LEO where it doesn't

At the core of Northwestel's network is its fibre-powered infrastructure. Many venues connect through high-capacity technology, capable of handling everything from live Community TV broadcasts to streaming video.

But not all venues are easy to reach. The newly constructed biathlon facility, located just outside city limits, posed a particular challenge.

When fibre infrastructure can't reach certain locations, Northwestel deploys its low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite technology, with mobile units powered by OneWeb, to bridge the gap.

"The beauty of LEO is its flexibility," Wylie explains. "We can place these services exactly where they're needed for the Games, and even aggregate multiple LEO connections to create the bandwidth required.”

Behind the technology

From design through ongoing management, Northwestel is building and will maintain the entire network infrastructure, with Fortinet systems that intelligently manage traffic and security, so every venue, system, and connection works as one cohesive whole.

When the Games begin on Mar. 8, athletes will compete, families will watch, and moments will be shared instantly across the North.

"From a business perspective, they're focused on running the Games," says Wylie. "We enable them to do what they need”. That’s the goal: cut through the blur so champions can focus on what matters.

Behind every gold medal moment at this year’s Arctic Winter Games is an unseen network. And for the team that built it, that invisibility is the ultimate achievement.

Follow the 2026 Arctic Winter Games and connect with stories from across the North at awg.nwtel.ca

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