or the tens of thousands of Alaskans who live off the road system, the internet has become a key source of information, commerce, and healthcare, as well as a lifeline in the wilderness.

What happens when it goes down?

The short answer is that the telecoms—GCI and Alaska Communications are the major carriers in rural Alaska—try to get the systems back up as quickly as possible. But given Alaska’s huge size, small population, lack of infrastructure, and notoriously bad weather, that is often easier said than done.

To start, a robust system with backups and redundancy go a long way toward preventing outages. Alaska Communications’ broadband is diversely routed throughout the state and by undersea cable to the Lower 48. Likewise, GCI maintains fully redundant submarine routes between the Alaska mainland and Lower 48, with links to Juneau and Fairbanks, says Chris Burns, vice president of operations for GCI network services.

“We call that the core network that gets traffic in and out of the state,” Burns says. GCI has staff in Seattle that maintain those facilities.

In Alaska, GCI serves 240 communities with a variety of services, including fiber microwave and satellite earth stations that provide connectivity to the more remote rural areas of the state, Burns says. The company’s centerpiece is called TERRA (Terrestrial for Every Rural Region in Alaska).

GCI’s TERRA network is a massive hybrid microwave-fiber network that brings high-speed broadband service to 45,000 Alaskans in eighty-four rural communities scattered across a mostly roadless region (the size of Texas) from Bethel to communities along the Yukon River, says Heather Handyside, GCI vice president of corporate communications and community engagement.

“Completing the TERRA ring was a big achievement for the company because, really, the ring is the gold standard in terms of redundancy for networks,” Handyside says. “If there does happen to be a break, traffic can be routed around the opposite way of the ring to reach our customers on both sides. That’s one key way that GCI makes sure that our service is as reliable as possible for our customers.”

Redundancy and backups are also an important part of Alaska Communications’ strategy.

Alaska Communications is the local exchange carrier for forty rural Alaska communities, says Heather Marron, manager of corporate communications.

Alaska Communications is expanding in Alaska using IP-based satellite and fixed wireless technology to offer high-speed, unlimited internet to rural and remote communities, Marron says. The company has also formed a partnership with Quintillion, which is bringing commercially available, high-speed internet to the North Slope.

“Our network brings the highest level of technology, reliability, security, and cloud enablement to Alaska businesses,” Marron says.

For example, rural schools rely on the internet to keep curriculums up to date. In fall 2018, Alaska Communications began serving the Kuspuk School District with satellite-based internet service, via its new satellite, in partnership with Eutelsat Americas.

“As a district, we have an obligation to provide our students with every possible educational tool to prepare them for an ever-changing workforce. High-quality instruction with access to high-quality internet service is essential to helping students be better prepared to meet future workforce demands,” Superintendent Bernie Grieve said in a news release. 

The Kuspuk School District encompasses eight schools and the district offices from Lower Kalskag to Stony River along a 120-mile stretch of the middle Kuskokwim River. No roads serve the area, although the river itself usually freezes solid enough during the winter to allow vehicle traffic.

Alaska Communications officials spent time in the region before service began to gauge the needs of the communities, says Bill Bishop, senior vice president of business markets.

“We shared many examples of live video feeds, file transfers, and let district officials see first-hand how our solution could work for them. We are committed to meeting the needs of the faculty, especially the educators, to provide students with necessary tools that are only available online,” he says.

Servicing such remote areas can be challenging, Marron adds. Local power grids can be unreliable, so Alaska Communications has emergency backup power systems.

Its Integrated Network Management System (INMC) monitors the network and systems 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, Marron says.

“When the INMC is notified of an outage, technicians and specialists analyze the situation and develop a plan to restore services,” she says. “In some cases, service can be restored remotely. In others, technicians must travel to the location to make the repairs.”

Weather and the availability of transportation affect the time it takes to make onsite repairs.

“What makes Alaska unique is the challenge presented by our remote population density,” Marron says. “In rural Alaska, our technicians work without standard travel amenities, like lodging and meal availability.”

Technicians must pack everything they need for their trip, including food and water.

“We rely on charter flights to transport heavy equipment,” Marron says. If the weather is bad, or an aircraft and pilot aren’t immediately available, delays can result.

“Once our technicians arrive, transportation around the village can be challenging,” she continues. “Sometimes technicians must walk to where they need to go, carrying their equipment, or take a boat or skiff. In some cases, local residents offer to drive technicians in their personal vehicles or snowmachines.”

Fortunately, such outages aren’t common. Alaska Communications reported eight local exchange service outages throughout its system in 2018 to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska.

GCI has more than sixty full-time and part-time employees that maintain its facilities in rural Alaska.

The managers strategically allocate technicians and equipment around the state so no site is more than one hop away.

Additionally, GCI has divided the state into four regions, each with its own manager and staff, Burns says. That way they’re not dependent on Anchorage, Fairbanks, or Juneau for all of their support services.

“We try to be as self-sufficient inmarket as we can with the support of other centralized locations like the regional hubs,” he says.

The most frequent cause for outages is loss of power. The weather is second, although many times it is the cause for the outage in the first place, Burns says. Both can contribute to equipment failures.

Just providing power and backup power for GCI’s remote network sites can be challenging, Handyside says. The refueling effort for mountaintop sites alone can take several months.

“Every year we need to transport diesel to these mountaintop generators,” Handyside says. “Each generator can hold 5,000 gallons of diesel. It really is a logistics effort in itself to use a specialty helicopter to reach the twenty-four mountaintop sites. We’ve got a very slim window to do that, due to weather, due to wildlife migration patterns… We go the extra mile and do everything possible to ensure that the networks remain up and running.”

As far as how long it takes to restore an outage, Burns says that depends entirely on the location and weather. If the weather is good, it might only take hours. If technicians get weathered in, it might be days.

Poor weather and equipment failure aren’t the only threats to Alaska’s telecom networks. Alaska Communications offers a range of managed information technology services to Alaska Native corporations and local governments in remote communities such as Dillingham, Sitka, Ketchikan, McGrath, Dutch Harbor, Unalakleet, Kotzebue, Nome, and Nushagak.

“Along with general IT support, cybersecurity is a critical focus for businesses,” Marron says. Alaska Communications works with businesses in these communities to design, build, and manage a variety of IT services.

“Alaska Communications engineers follow current cyber trends and employ industry-best practices to protect against attacks,” says Marron.

Over the past twenty years, telecom and internet technology has spread to all corners of the state and is an integral part of everyday life. The state’s telecoms are working to keep service up-to-date and affordable. Alaska Communications notes that it has not raised its rates for basic telephone service since 2004.

“Serving remote areas has become increasingly challenging and expensive,” Marron says. “Over time, both the federal and state governments have reduced support for service to high-cost, remote areas, creating significant challenges in serving these communities.”

Despite the challenges, both companies are committed to maintaining and improving their rural Alaska networks. GCI upgraded service to more than thirty-five communities in 2018, Handyside says.

“I don’t know that TERRA will ever be done and we’re always looking at ways to connect new communities,” Handyside says. “Making a financial case for this kind of massive investment can be challenging and that’s why GCI is always looking at ways we can build a financial model that makes sense to build very complicated and often very expensive networks and spurs to reach very small communities with very small populations.”

The networks have also become an important safety net for rural residents.

“There’s more than one story about someone surviving a plane accident, an air travel accident, and being able to reach somebody because they had connectivity through GCI,” Handyside says. “So it is really not a luxury or a convenience. It really can be a life safety service that we provide.”