IT services across northern BC
Managed IT, helpdesk, cybersecurity, cloud and phone systems for businesses between Quesnel and Fort Nelson, Prince Rupert and Dawson Creek. We are based in Prince George, which means northern BC is not a territory we cover from somewhere else.
North Star is a managed service provider headquartered in Prince George. Most northern BC businesses have the same problem with IT: the providers who will actually come out are small and stretched, and the ones with real depth are in Vancouver or Calgary and treat the north as a travel expense. We built the company the other way round. The helpdesk, the monitoring and the security work all run remotely, which is how a problem in Fort Nelson gets solved in minutes instead of on the next flight, and on-site work is scheduled on a regular cadence rather than improvised.
Rates are published rather than quoted on request: $95 per hour for scheduled standard work, $143 per hour for emergency response, $720 for a full day on site, and mileage at $0.85 to $1.05 per kilometre depending on the vehicle and load. Managed plans start at $89 per user per month. If you are comparing us against a southern provider, the travel line is the one worth checking, because ours starts from Prince George.
Helpdesk and IT support for northern BC
A helpdesk your staff can actually reach, covering Windows, Microsoft 365, printers, line-of-business applications and the everyday breakage that stops someone working. Most tickets are resolved remotely within minutes. What cannot be fixed remotely gets scheduled, and for hardware-down events in the Prince George area it gets same-day dispatch. See IT support in Prince George or browse the city pages below.
Cybersecurity across the north
Endpoint detection and response on every machine, multi-factor authentication enforced rather than merely available, email filtering, dark web monitoring and security awareness training. Northern operators are targeted for the same reason everyone else is, and remote sites with thin connectivity and shared logins are the softest part of most northern networks. See cybersecurity services and managed SOC.
Cloud and Microsoft 365 migration
Moving email and files off an aging on-premises server is the most common project we run in the north, because a server in a mill office is a single point of failure sitting a long way from anyone who can rebuild it. We handle Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace migrations, Azure and AWS moves, and the file-share restructuring that makes SharePoint usable instead of resented. See cloud services and Microsoft 365 migration.
Business phone systems that work on northern connectivity
Cloud VoIP that survives the bandwidth you actually have, with number porting, call flow, and handsets that work at a remote site as well as they do at head office. We size the deployment against your real circuit rather than assuming urban fibre. See business phone systems.
Backup, disaster recovery and wildfire season
Backup that is tested by restoring from it, not by watching a job report go green. In the north the continuity planning has to account for things that are genuinely regional: wildfire evacuation, highway closures, and multi-day power events at sites that are hours from a technician. We plan for the site being unreachable rather than merely the server being down. See backup and disaster recovery.
Several locations, one standard
Operations running a head office plus camps, yards, mills or branch offices need the same build everywhere, not a different setup per site inherited from whoever was available. We standardise the stack, the security baseline and the support process across every location. See multi-location IT and vCIO advisory.
Northern BC communities we serve
Each has its own page with local detail. Remote support reaches anywhere with a connection.
Common questions about IT services in Northern BC.
Do you actually come to site in northern BC, or is it all remote?
Both, deliberately. The helpdesk, monitoring, patching and security work run remotely, because that is how a problem gets solved in minutes rather than after a drive or a flight. On-site work is scheduled on a regular cadence for the things that need hands on hardware, and hardware-down events in the Prince George area get same-day dispatch. For communities further out we book site visits in advance and batch the work, which is what keeps travel from dominating the invoice.
What does IT support cost in northern BC?
Our rates are published: $95 per hour for scheduled standard work, $143 per hour for emergency response, and $720 for a full day on site, which is a day rate rather than an hourly one. Mileage is $0.85 to $1.05 per kilometre depending on the vehicle and what it is carrying. Managed plans start at $89 per user per month. Travel is quoted before we book, never after.
Which northern BC communities do you cover?
Prince George is our base. We regularly work in Quesnel, Williams Lake, 100 Mile House, Vanderhoof, Burns Lake, Houston, Smithers, Terrace, Kitimat, Prince Rupert, Mackenzie, Chetwynd, Dawson Creek, Fort St John and Fort Nelson. Remote support reaches anywhere with a connection, so the community list is really about where we schedule on-site time.
Are you cheaper than bringing someone up from Vancouver?
On travel, almost always, because ours starts in Prince George rather than 600 kilometres south. On rates, we publish ours so you can compare directly instead of asking for a quote. The bigger difference is response: a southern provider's on-site visit is a trip that has to be planned around, while ours is a scheduled cadence you can build a maintenance window against.
Can you support remote sites, camps and mills with poor connectivity?
Yes, and it is a large part of what we do. That means sizing cloud services and phone systems against the circuit you actually have rather than the one a vendor datasheet assumes, planning for sites that go offline rather than treating it as an exception, and using Starlink where terrestrial options do not exist. We publish a guide to Starlink for business if you are weighing it up.
Do you work with forestry, mining and construction operators?
Yes. Those are the industries northern BC runs on, and they share a set of IT problems: equipment and staff spread across sites, intermittent connectivity, seasonal headcount, and safety or environmental reporting that cannot go missing. We build for the sites being remote rather than bolting remote access onto an office-shaped design.
Want managed IT in Northern BC?
A 30-minute scoping call covers your sites, systems and obligations, and we return a written quote within two business days.
Get a Free Assessment