Microcom

laska generally isn’t viewed as a hotbed for technology trends. That will no longer be the case in 2020 and beyond, as new projects level the playing field and help set the state on par with the rest of the world. From the introduction of the state’s first—and only—terrestrial fiber network to the implementation of increased satellite data bandwidth, Alaskans can expect technology trends to continue to blossom throughout the state.

“Going forward, Alaska can really stay on the same page from a dialogue standpoint with anywhere in the world when they start talking about any type of new technologies or services being deployed,” says Matanuska Telephone Association (MTA) CEO Michael Burke. “People can now think about and realize that bandwidth constraints and capacity constraints are not an obstacle anymore in regard to Alaska doing pretty much anything from a technology standpoint.”

MTA has witnessed exceptional growth in the average broadband consumption its customers need. That led the company to launch AlCan ONE, the state’s first terrestrial fiber network, on May 1, 2019. The project, which includes a terrestrial cable that will bring 100 terabytes per second capacity to Alaska, is on pace to be completed this spring.

“As technology continues to grow and advance, our biggest observation we have in the marketplace from a technology standpoint is the exponential growth in broadband consumption,” says Burke. “Just in the last couple years alone, our average consumption per customer has doubled in terms of the amount of bandwidth they need. That probably isn’t going to slow down or decrease in terms of any kind of volume into the future, so we needed to keep pace with that growth and those demands.”

For years, Alaska relied on four submarine cables between Alaska and the Lower 48. MTA was purchasing bandwidth from those cables, but Burke says MTA decided it needed a new system to keep up with technology trends. “A lot of it is being driven by all of the IoT connected devices that people are putting into their homes or businesses,” he says.

“As people deploy more and more devices that require internet bandwidth to operate and they end up living more and more interconnected lives where all these different technologies really integrate into their daily lives—the way they work and the way they play—we have to make sure that the services and the interactions we have with those customers address those needs as much as possible.”

Until now, Alaska hasn’t had the ability to bring terabytes of capacity into the state. Burke says AlCan ONE will change that landscape and allow Alaskans to take advantage of future technologies as they become available.

“To have an all-fiber terrestrial connection from Alaska down to the Lower 48 enables the kind of bandwidth that people probably take for granted across the country,” says Burke. “You have a lot of fiber infrastructure, you have the ability to easily deploy terabytes of capacity into communities that, in turn, can enable a lot of these future technologies that people are talking about as you start to explore augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and all of these things that are going to be bandwidth intensive.”

“It’s built to feed the broadband fiber needs in our market, but it has almost unlimited capacity going forward,” Burke says. “We’ve now increased the amount of capacity available to Alaska almost 100-fold from where it was before. That fiber capacity can be used for a number of things, whether it’s voice communications or government and military connections in and out of the state.”

Burke notes one added bonus AlCan ONE will provide: route diversity in the event of a significant natural disaster.

“It’s very geographically diverse from the submarine cables that currently come into the state,” Burke says. “They all converge into the Anchorage market in a fairly narrow space, and a major earthquake or some sort of other event could damage them all at once, which would severely hamper the entire state from an operations standpoint. Our route goes hundreds of miles north up through Fairbanks and then down through Canada, so it’s much more geographically diverse and gives some type of protection for the state.”

Microcom Founder and Pacific Dataport CEO Chuck Schumann says he couldn’t take Alaska being left behind when it came to technology advancements, and that is why Microcom decided to found Pacific Dataport in 2017 with the idea of creating an Aurora System broadband network that would provide Alaskans with better and more affordable broadband packages across the state. “Alaska always suffered by being left out of more of the new projects or new offerings that are available across the Lower 48 and possibly Hawaii,” says Schumann. “Microcom just decided we couldn’t take it anymore, so we decided to build Pacific Dataport to build and launch the Aurora Project, which would take the technology that we’re using in very limited sections of the state and deploy it on a new satellite that would be purpose built to cover Alaska and bring affordable broadband to all of the state.”

Schumann notes that companies that are currently providing satellite services aren’t focused on Alaska. “They don’t look to put a satellite over the Pacific to serve Alaska,” he says. “We’re sort of last on the list, and that’s why we decided to do this. Someone needed to step up and solve this problem.”

The Aurora Project initially started as one satellite before quickly morphing into a two-satellite project. With two satellites, Pacific Dataport can provide its own redundancy and utilize a phased approach that will allow the company to get into orbit faster while maximizing capacity.

The Aurora Project wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for advancements in satellite technology that have taken shape in recent years. “The timing in this project is also very important because the advances in satellite technology over the last five to ten years have been off the charts,” says Bruce Kraselsky, who is on Pacific Dataport’s board of directors and is the founder and managing director of Space Partnership International, which is providing the expertise on the space segment for engineering and regulatory support on the project.

“Even in the last five years, the advances in processing and beamforming and microminiaturization have allowed satellite manufacturers to build systems that are a fraction of the size of a traditional satellite with 100 times more capacity at a substantial deduction of the overall price,” Kraselsky says. “Whereas the old-fashioned satellites could’ve given you a gigabit and a half of capacity with the entire satellite—which might have cost $150 million to $200 million—now for that same price, you can put 100 to 200 gigabits of capacity. In addition to the satellite technology advancements, the cost of launching satellites into space has also gone down dramatically.”

Kraselsky notes that it wouldn’t have made sense for large satellite manufacturers to invest money and only focus on Alaska. That became feasible for Microcom, which understands the Alaska market and has the ability to cover the entire state, including remote areas.

While remote parts of the state typically relied on expensive broadband services in the past, Pacific Dataport is determined that its satellites provide affordable broadband options for the entire state, regardless of location. “We’re going to have the highest possible orbital location for a geo satellite,” says Schumann. “With a view over the entire landmass of Alaska, we’ll be able to provide service to almost everyone.”

Microcom will sell direct to consumers and place earth stations on homes or businesses that want direct-to-premises installations. The Aurora satellites will also allow other companies to take broadband capacity and build wireless systems to deploy that capacity through their existing systems of wires, whether that’s rural telephone companies, cable systems, or other distribution methods. “Pacific Dataport will sell capacity to any company that needs to use it to provide broadband to their subscribers,” Schumann says.

The satellites will also provide backup to existing fiber networks that don’t currently have backups in place and provide services for natural resource development across the state.

“In this day and age, when people invest billions of dollars in a new project somewhere, they’ve got process control that they need,” says Schumann. “If they’re not satisfied with having a single path for those communications, providing satellite as a primary or as a redundancy is really important. The two satellites would allow us to really provide good, quality, secure links for those kinds of solutions.”

The first Aurora satellite is scheduled to launch during the fourth quarter of 2020 on a SpaceX rocket from Kennedy Space Center, after which the project will provide services to numerous verticals throughout the state.

“We’re going to provide services to the aeronautical businesses that are providing services to airplanes that fly across the state—there’s a great need for that and we’re lacking in capacity over the state,” says Schumann. “People flying north from Alaska get into dead zones where they can’t have internet on the airplanes. The maritime industry also needs a lot of capacity. With all the new cruise ships, we also need to serve that industry.”