RECENT FIBER BREAKS SHOW ALASKA NEEDS A STATEWIDE BROADBAND BACKUP PLAN

Over the last year, residents across Alaska have experienced their cellular and broadband connectivity being cut-off from the rest of the world. In more urban communities, rerouting happens a lot sooner and everyone’s back online within a few hours. In more remote areas where there are no alternative routing options, it could be weeks or months until the fiber break is repaired and services restart.

The list isn’t short: Utqia?vik, Wainwright, Point Hope, Kotzebue, Nome, Atqasuk, Anchorage, Juneau, Sterling, Kenai, Soldotna and sometimes it’s statewide. Broadband connectivity is now closely woven into society and it’s not just a luxury – it’s a basic utility. You need the Internet to connect to your doctor, your teacher, and your family.

What happens when there’s an actual fiber cut in rural Alaska? To date, the fiber broadband provider scrambles to deploy the satellite industry’s newest technology as a temporary fix and tries to reconnect their customers as fast as possible. This means they must negotiate a capacity contract, purchase the hardware, and arrange logistics as soon as possible.

The broadband customer can also look for an alternative and usually they find it with Starlink. These customers spend about $650 to buy a new system, most install it themselves, and ultimately pay 1/3 to 1/4 of what they were previously paying for broadband.

What is the U.S. government’s role in making sure connectivity is resilient and affordable in every American community? President Biden and his administration have announced that everyone will get some kind of broadband, spending as much as $400,000 to run fiber to a single location. The NTIA BEAD program, as mandated by Congress, requires each state to connect every home to the Internet.

The State of Alaska established a broadband office to distribute federal funds, help fund school broadband, and set the minimum speed standards in the classroom. At both the state and federal level, our government has taken an active role in setting standards and funding connectivity. That said, neither has established standards for backing up broadband networks to provide critical communications. In a vast state like ours, this needs to be a priority for Alaska legislators.

Let’s talk about the $1.01 billion in BEAD funding coming to Alaska for broadband buildouts. According to the FCC broadband maps and the State’s Alaska Broadband Office (ABO), there are approximately 16,000 non-communal, extremely high-cost locations that need some form of connectivity (imagine a remote cabin). The State of Alaska ABO has determined fiber is not a likely solution and it will take satellite to fill this connectivity gap – Starlink alone cannot do this.

If the State of Alaska ABO took about 15% and invested it in an Alaska-focused satellite, not only could these 16,000 residents have broadband, but the state would have a backup option available to any broadband provider at low cost. It could also be used to immediately connect communities scheduled to get fiber connectivity until fiber arrives.

Pacific Dataport’s Aurora Network would be locally owned and operated, and check all of these boxes. Its core mission is to provide a statewide backup for critical emergency communications in case we have another natural disaster like the ’64 and ’18 earthquakes – or another fiber break.

Alaska legislators must ensure the BEAD funds provide Alaskans with long-term broadband resiliency and have a statewide backup network ready, when needed. The time is now.

Shawn Williams is the VP of Government Affairs & Strategy for Pacific Dataport in Anchorage. He’s a 44-year resident of Alaska and former Assistant Commissioner of Commerce for the State of Alaska. Shawn is a member of the Karuk Tribe of California, earned a BA in Economics at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and an Executive MBA in Strategic Leadership at Alaska Pacific University.