Government
MTA
Office of Broadband
Taking the lead on expanding Alaska’s internet connectivity
By Vanessa Orr
T

o take part in the global economy, communication is key. Yet parts of Alaska still lack access to high-speed internet or to any internet at all.

To help improve access, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), provides $42.5 billion to expand high-speed internet access by funding planning, infrastructure deployment, and adoption programs in all fifty states, Puerto Rico, and other US territories. The funds will be administered to each location by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) newly established Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth.

Alaska has an office of its own. In August, Governor Mike Dunleavy formed the Alaska Office of Broadband to bridge the digital divide in rural, suburban, and tribal communities. The state office will distribute federal funds to prioritized communities. Though each state is expected to get $100 million minimum from the IIJA, money isn’t the only issue facing Alaska when it comes to increasing connectivity.

“In terms of magnitude, the sheer vast distances that the broadband infrastructure has to span between locations is far greater than anywhere else in the United States,” says Lisa Von Bargen, senior project manager at the Office of Broadband in the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. “Pair that with a lack of population density in many areas of the state, and that makes it even more difficult when you take into consideration not only the capital expenditure but ongoing costs for maintaining networks.”

“By creating digital equity, we are looking to make new entries into the workforce that are best exemplified by remote workers… They will be able to join the global economy from their own villages.”
Thomas Lochner
Director
Alaska Office of Broadband
Across the Miles
For Alaskans to take advantage of high-speed internet, an immense amount of middle- and last-mile infrastructure needs to be put into place. After construction is over, funds need to be set aside for operational expenses.

“We face the typical challenges that other states face, only more extreme,” says Thomas Lochner, director of the Office of Broadband. “Other than a couple of valleys in Colorado, most places don’t experience -50°F temperatures that freeze the creosote on the poles, which creates hazardous conditions for workers.”

Areas that already have internet connections still struggle with quality, so the office has plans to upgrade them.

“While some locations are served by geostationary satellites, the difference between low-earth orbiting satellites [LEOs] and fiber latency is immense,” says Lochner. “Depending on distance, fiber takes 20 to 60 milliseconds to send a data packet; geostationary satellites take 600 to 700 milliseconds.” A human eyeblink is around 250 milliseconds; double or triple that time can trip up computers.

“A health clinic in an ultra-rural community using a geostationary satellite connection often has trouble because 700 milliseconds of latency causes some modern software to detect that the connection is broken, so it resends the message,” Lochner explains, “and that creates its own problems.”

The BEAD program prioritizes how funding can be spent, targeting unserved communities first, followed by underserved communities and then community anchor institutions, such as libraries, that lack gigabit service.

Collaboration and Transparency
Such a massive project takes collaboration between a lot of different entities.

“The broadband funding coming to the state is an amazing opportunity for collaboration, but we’re only going to accomplish this universal build-out through strong collaboration with tribal partners, municipal partners, internet providers and utility companies, and a strong workforce,” says Von Bargen. “It’s going to take everyone coming together, including community anchor institutions, to coalesce around the plan. We’ll need to use everyone’s resources to get it done.”

Lochner adds, “We understand that some organizations and municipalities may not have experience in this area, so we are encouraging existing carriers—including for-profit companies and nonprofit co-ops—to work with them as well as the Office of Broadband to make sure that the outcomes outlined in HB363 and IIJA are met… We need to make sure that this influx of capital funding isn’t used to build projects that in three years are in disrepair.”

Broadband carriers will submit grant applications to access the funds, which will first be used to provide service in areas that have none.

“When Congress passed the IIJA, communities with broadband speeds of 25 Mbps [megabits per second] download and 3 Mmps upload were considered unserved, and the money will first be used to bring them up to that service level,” explains MTA CEO Michael Burke. MTA currently provides broadband services to a 10,000 square mile region in Alaska.

“The second step will be to help communities whose networks cannot get up to 100 Mbps download speeds and 20 Mbps upload speed,” he continues. “That will be considered the new baseline, and whatever networks are being built will be scalable for the future since broadband speeds are continually evolving. We want to make sure that we can scale up to what may be needed thirty years in the future.”

“There are going to be a lot of challenges since everything in Alaska is on a grander scale,” says Becky Windt Pearson, GCI’s general counsel and senior vice president for law and corporate advocacy. “In many places, equipment will need to cross mountain ranges where the ownership is a patchwork of federal and state agencies. Permitting requirements will make installing this infrastructure more difficult, but we have other hurdles—like massive icing on rural microwave towers and bears playing with fiber optic cable—that other states don’t have.”

Even if the install goes relatively smoothly, maintenance is a challenge in communities with small populations, which adds to operating costs.

“Because the customer base is fairly small in some of these communities, the economics of getting broadband there and maintaining it can cost millions for only a couple hundred people,” says Burke. “The hope is that with this grant money, it will cover a large portion of the capital cost, which will make it more viable to provide the same type of service that is available in urban areas.”

MTA’s team blowing fiber outside of Tok.

MTA

Worker laying fiber cables
MTA’s team blowing fiber outside of Tok.

MTA

“Permitting requirements will make installing this infrastructure more difficult, but we have other hurdles, like massive icing on rural microwave towers and bears playing with fiber optic cable, that other states don’t have.”
Becky Windt Pearson
General Counsel and Senior Vice President for Law and Corporate Advocacy
GCI
A Head Start on Connecting
The state and its broadband providers have already been laying the groundwork to increase service in some underserved areas.

“What’s missing in a lot of areas is the middle-mile connection, which connects communities to an internet peering point. It’s a critical piece,” says Burke. “Calculations done about six or eight years ago estimated that it would cost $1 billion to $1.5 billion to build that middle mile, but since then, a lot of middle mile construction has been going on.”

In 2020, using private capital, MTA completed AlCan ONE, the first all-terrestrial fiber line connecting Alaska to the Lower 48, and GCI is currently closing the digital divide through the AU-Aleutians Fiber Project. GCI also recently received a federal Rural Utility Service grant for the Lower Kuskokwim project to serve communities surrounding Bethel. A tribal broadband connectivity program has provided funding for projects, as well.

“The nice thing is that, in addition to the federal infrastructure money, a program called ReConnect provided federal grants to the state for broadband projects, including more than $200 million in grants in the last few months to get broadband out to different communities,” says Burke. “A number of carriers have taken advantage of the ReConnect program, including MTA, which recently put fiber into homes up north near Caswell that didn’t have phone or broadband services before.”

Workers laying fiber lines in the ocean
GCI’S AU-Aleutians Fiber project is about the same length as TAPS, spanning 800 miles from Kodiak to the Aleutians. It will begin delivering “urban-level speed, service, and reliability” to Unalaska by the end of this year; to Sand Point and King Cove by the end of 2023; and to Chignik Bay and Larsen Bay by 2024.

GCI

Large boat in ocean laying fiber lines behind it
GCI’S AU-Aleutians Fiber project is about the same length as TAPS, spanning 800 miles from Kodiak to the Aleutians. It will begin delivering “urban-level speed, service, and reliability” to Unalaska by the end of this year; to Sand Point and King Cove by the end of 2023; and to Chignik Bay and Larsen Bay by 2024.

GCI

Workforce and Supply Concerns
Broadband providers call statewide fiber connections a “game changer” because it could enable Alaskans in the most remote villages to pursue careers without leaving home.

“By creating digital equity, we are looking to make new entries into the workforce that are best exemplified by remote workers,” says Lochner. “They will be able to join the global economy from their own villages.”

To build this broadband infrastructure will require engineers, heavy equipment operators, technicians, technical and front desk support, transportation and logistics coordinators, and more. The problem is there might not be enough skilled workers to go around.

“The Infrastructure and Jobs Act is also funding road, bridge, and airport construction, and they’ll need personnel to get that work done,” says Burke. “We’ll be competing with other sectors to find the employees we need.”

As the supply of people is spread thin, so is the supply of critical parts.

“Carriers all across the country are working with vendors, the administration, and people in Congress to try to get companies to ramp up production to make sure that we have the supplies we need when the money starts flowing,” Burke says. “We’re trying to get ahead of it. Fingers crossed that things will get better.”

While Congress has mandated that the broadband expansion needs to be completed within five years, it may take longer to come to fruition.

“When we order fiber optic cable, the lead time is about two years,” says Burke, adding that MTA is currently ordering supplies for work to be done in summer 2024. “This creates a real challenge to build things quickly. We’re also struggling to get a skilled workforce, which could create a roadblock as well.”

MTA’s fiber yard at it is headquarters in Palmer.

MTA

MTA fiber yard in Palmer
MTA’s fiber yard at it is headquarters in Palmer.

MTA

From Plan to Project
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is working on nationwide broadband mapping that pinpoints what kind of broadband service and speed is available at every location, called the “fabric.” This map will help determine how money is allocated to each state, weighted for areas with high installation costs.

The first iteration of the fabric map was released at the end of June, and Alaska’s internet providers noticed some pretty significant problems.

“At the time the original maps were released, we became aware that at least sixty-nine Alaska communities were missing, and there were more than a hundred others deficient in structures based on the 2020 census,” says Von Bargen. “That data set has since been improved upon by the FCC’s contractor, identifying tens of thousands of potential locations in Alaska. We are confident we can get to where we need to be working with our federal partners.”

The Alaska Office of Broadband has since done a high-level review of the revised fabric map, and the office is also acquiring` its own satellite mapping data in partnership with the Rasmuson Foundation.

“This will allow us to extract building footprints to compare to the FCC information to make sure that potential broadband service areas are not missed,” says Von Bargen.

Planning funds are on the way, with a $567,000 Digital Equity planning grant and a $5 million BEAD planning grant arriving this fall. Once fabric mapping has been completed, the NTIA will make its calculations and the remaining $95 million in funds will be released to the state.

“We don’t know exactly when the NTIA will make those allocation decisions, though we’re working on getting our five-year action plan, initial proposal, and final proposal finished as quickly as possible,” says Von Bargen. “While states are given statutorily mandated maximum timeframes to get these done, we believe that time is of the essence, and we want to get it finished in less than the allowable time.”

Though an almost overwhelming task, the Office of Broadband has been able to keep the project moving at a fast pace since the day Governor Dunleavy created it.

“We have been really impressed with the work that the administration did to get the groundwork in place for the establishment of the broadband deployment office, including the foresight to put together the broadband task force that led to the passing of House Bill 363,” says Windt Pearson. “They have positioned the state well to participate in the BEAD program so that we can hit the ground running.”

“We have a lot of work ahead of us to get the job done, and we’re really excited,” says Burke. “Just imagine what an impact this project will have on Alaskans’ lives.”