Community Level Access
Continuing along the access chain, local communities have two linkages: to infrastructures, such as communications systems, and to educational providers beyond the community that may use community facilities to deliver programs locally. As well, larger communities with their own educational institutions may serve as a hub for smaller communities.

Community learning facilities
The idea of a community facility that serves as a venue for a variety of learning programs offered by a number of different educational providers, distant and/or local, is one that has been introduced with varying degrees of success in Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia. As well, northern communities in the territories are developing learning sites, and various networks of learning sites are being set up in aboriginal communities. How well community facilities are used, and by whom, and to what extent they meet the needs of learners, depends on an array of factors ranging from internal community politics to the location of the building.

At the community level, there is a possibility that technology needs will increase over time. In the 1980s, basic equipment for the first Contact North learning sites comprised audio conference equipment, fax machines, and a computer for the local site facilitator.¹¹ Now, most Contact North community learning facilities have conferencing equipment (audiographics and/or videoconferencing) and computers that can provide learners with Internet access.

There is also the question of how many sites are enough to meet local needs, and which communities receive which type of service. Learners in one major prairie city travelled 200 km once a week in winter conditions to reach the location of a videoconference class delivered from a third prairie city. The example raises the questions of why the learners' home city of 60,000 people did not have access to videoconferencing and whether the learners, if asked, might have preferred local access to audio conferencing rather than driving that distance to videoconferencing.

New technologies and community access
With the advent of SchoolNet, the federally initiated program to link all schools and libraries to the Internet by 1998, there is increasing interest in having public access to the Internet in more and more communities.

Local libraries or schools may agree to offer access to the public, but there must still be sufficient resources available to provide a reasonable number of well equipped computers and staff (volunteer or paid) to help train learners. An initiative, supported by Industry Canada, is the Community Access Program in which communities submit applications for up to $30,000 to establish a community access facility enabling residents to use computers with Internet access. However, the emphasis of CAP appears to be more on business related uses of the Internet than on adult learning. As well, CAP's information materials and application process make no mention of access issues for any equity groups.

In whatever situation, having equipment available is just the first step. It may take a concerted effort by learners and facilitators to make sure a community facility provides access to learning and offers the privacy and uninterrupted use of equipment that learners need. As well, training in computer use works best when it is adaptable to the needs of the learners, rather than a "one size fits all" approach. Women have reported they feel more comfortable when working with other women, and when having an opportunity to explore for themselves how a system works rather than simply be given directions.

Internet Service Providers
Another aspect of access relevant at the community level is that of Internet service provision. An Internet service provider (ISP) maintains the linking systems (computers, phone lines and software) that serve as the bridge between the individual computer users' modem and the network of networks that is termed the Internet. Although there are increasing numbers of cooperative, public and private ISP enterprises, access to the Internet is by no means ubiquitous in Canada. Those who have no local ISP have to dial long distance to reach one, which can be very costly.

Although many ISPs are at present small enterprises, they could be amalgamated into much larger corporations, much as local cable companies merged into large companies during the past two decades. Local monopolies in Internet access may have the outcome of increasing costs to the user, thus limiting access.

There is also a question about what type of Internet will be available in the future. Plans are well underway for academic institutions, the original main users of the Internet, to set up their own Internet, (dubbed Internet II), possibly leaving behind the increasingly commercialized supermarket of infomercials that bulk up the World Wide Web.¹² It is not possible to determine what this will mean for access to learning opportunities via the Internet, but it seems likely to complicate the situation for some time.