Unalaska broadband service is latest in series of federally supported rural Alaska projects
The Aleutian Islands’ remote community, which is the country’s busiest fishing port by revenue, now has high-speed internet access for most residents thanks to a government-backed fiber optic project.
The completion of the Unalaska portion of the AU-Aleutians fiber project is the latest milestone in a far-reaching effort to improve telecommunications throughout rural Alaska.
It required an 800-mile cable running underwater between the Aleutian town of about 4,000 and Kodiak. Officials from GCI, the company behind the project, and from various levels of government gathered in person and online at the Alaska Native Heritage Center Thursday to celebrate the achievement. In addition to Unalaska, future work on the project will connect five other communities in the region over the next two years.
Among those celebrating the occasion was Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who addressed the GCI convention at the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage in a recorded message.
“This ministry has the potential to transform not only Unalaska, but the communities of the Aleutian Range, Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak,” Dunleavy said.
It means more than convenience and better entertainment, he said.
“It bridges the digital divide for thousands of Alaskans who are scattered far and wide,” he said. “It will enable access to telemedicine, improve education and public safety, and open up the jobs of today in the future that can be done from anywhere, by any Alaskan with the skills and the right broadband speed.”
The Aleutian Project is one of several in Alaska that have received substantial federal funding. Of the $58 million for the first phase of the project, $25 million came from the US Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service ReConnect program.
“The digital divide is starting to close in Unalaska, and it’s starting to close in other parts of Alaska through these other public-private partnerships,” said GCI President Greg Chapados at Thursday’s ceremony.
A second phase of the AU-Aleutian project to expand service to six more rural communities stretching from the Alaska Peninsula to the Kodiak Archipelago received a $29.3 million grant in September from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration tribal connectivity program.
Broadband service in rural Alaska has received a significant boost from the Federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. Overall, the law allocated $65 billion for broadband services, with much of that going through Alaska’s existing programs to fund rural and indigenous communities projects.
The infrastructure bill was the source for most of a $136 million grant package announced in November for broadband projects in regions stretching from the northwest Arctic coast to the southern tip of southeastern Alaska.