Lakeland Networks, a division of Lakeland Energy Ltd, is owned by 5 local municipalities; Sundridge, Burk’s Falls, Magnetwan, Huntsville and Bracebridge. Originally, these municipalities amalgamated their utilities to form Lakeland Power Ltd. Later, they created Lakeland Energy Ltd/Lakeland Networks to help support areas of business that needed assistance, providing services including Muskoka high-speed wireless internet, VoIP phone service, point to point networking for business internet, and full service IT and local area network solutions and VLAN extensions. One of the key areas was Bracebridge high-speed internet and the lack of superior internet connectivity for business within Muskoka. Lakeland Networks started to run optic fibre cabling along the hydro poles within the municipalities to help support the mandate of creating a better economic environment for the business community. Lakeland Networks’ focus is to provide businesses within the District of Muskoka and Simcoe Township with improved internet connectivity to help support growth and open opportunities for possibilities that would not have existed without superior broadband speeds. We are the largest local fibre optic network provider within Muskoka. As Lakeland Networks grew, our networking services continued to expand. With our focus on strictly dealing with businesses, it became apparent that this area did not have enough IT Support services. Lakeland Networks hired the highest qualified technical staff within the area and now have a thriving IT support division to assist local businesses in providing a stable and secure environment for their IT business needs. Our staff has assisted in major Asian schooling system IT projects and in the largest IBM blade centre networks within the U.S. We are now the largest IT Support provider within Muskoka for business. As we developed relationships with local business, we realized that IP telephony was to be a perfect fit for our stable fibre optic internet service. IP telephony is becoming the most efficient system for telephony services. We have technicians with over 20 years experience and have been fully trained in SIP as well as conventional digital technologies. Lakeland Networks has recently become an authorized distributor for NEC telephone systems, and also supports SNOM systems for the value conscious businesses. We can provide network solutions and services from basic cabling to complete turnkey systems including PBX solutions. We are now a full service IT provider, supporting internet connectivity through DSL, wireless and fibre optics. We offer hosted environments from exchange to virtual servers. We support many of the local businesses IT infrastructure and handle the complete support of some of the towns. We offer IT hardware sales from HP to IBM Lenovo, as well telephony hardware from SNOM and NEC. We also offer local telephone numbers and long distance packages through VoIP. Our mandate has and will continue to be to provide services to local businesses that assist in growing our local economy and making the Muskoka region a place where business can thrive to its highest potential.