High speed buzz line

• Fiber optics cable connects Bristol Bay villages for first time with high speed Internet
By Naomi Klouda
Homer Tribune

HOMER TRIBUNE/Naomi Klouda - United Utilities Inc. crews dig a borehole at Biship’s beach last week to lay the end point of the fiber optic cable that is to lay across Cook Inlet.

Crews tore into a small portion of Bishop’s Beach last week to lay the foundation cable for a broadband link that will connect 65 western Alaska villages in an historic telecommunications project.
Called the TERRA-SW project, it is funded with a $44 million grant from the USDA Rural Utilities Service and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and a $44 million loan to United Utilities Inc. UUI is a subsidiary of GCI.
The Homer work is the beginning of the fiber optic line. A “bore” endpoint was buried below the Elks Lodge at Bishop’s Beach and into the tide line, said Krag, Johnsen, director of rural broadband for GCI.
“The next step is from a ship out in Cook Inlet. From Homer to Williams Port that last week in June and first week of July, they will begin to lay cable off the back of a ship,” Johnsen said. “The cable will lay on the bottom of the bay. It’s a heavy armored fiber optic cable that works its way into silt and mud and gets down embedded in the inlet.”
All 65 villages in western Alaska – including the villages around Lake Iliamna near the proposed Pebble mine – are to benefit from fiber optics. Currently they are dependent on a satellite connection. This will be the first time they are getting a terrestrial line on the ground and microwave reception, a broadband form long available to communities along the road system.
It will extend terrestrial broadband services to Bristol Bay and Kuskokwim communities as far north as Bethel, and more than 9,000 households.
The project was identified as being of national importance for a number of reasons after it became known that no villages in the region have access to broadband service as defined by the Broadband Stimulus Act, according to a release from the USDA.
Of particular concern is that the nearly 150 hospitals, clinics, and schools lack access to dependable high speed connectivity. High cost is one prohibiting factor. Service for residential, government, and business users is constrained by satellite and limits their ability to make full use of the Internet.
The project has an economic development benefit in a region known for the Pebble Project’s contention that the mine is needed in order to provide jobs.
The project is a massive undertaking that involves running nine fiber segments, totaling 290 miles of submarine and land-based cable.
There will be seven cable landing stations and 14 new microwave towers.
Several tug and barge services to help lay cable also are employed in the project, including the Iliamna Development Corporation‘s barge and tug, and the Polar Bear Barge.
A land-based portion from Igigugik to Levelock is already complete, with Williams Port to Pile Bay work started last week, Johnsen said.
“We’re hoping to be finished with the major construction by the end of the summer, then complete the network pieces toward the end of the year,” he said.