How a fiber-optic cable could forever change life

How a fiber-optic cable could forever change life

Summer construction on the first fiber-optic cable to cross the Arctic has rural Alaska telecom providers promising a huge market shift in a region that is on the underserved side of the digital divide.

 

As two ships unspool cable onto the floor of the Bering and Chukchi seas, consumers in six coastal communities from Nome to Barrow anticipate cheaper, speedier internet and the ability to download more data without overage charges by the middle of next year.

 

The economics of bringing internet to rural Alaska are lousy, which is why the federal government, through various programs, subsidizes connectivity. And even then, rural consumers pay high rates for plans with low data limits and download speeds.

 

But these communities — Nome, Kotzebue, Point Hope, Wainwright, Barrow and the oil industry work camps at Prudhoe Bay — happen to be along the path of a fiber-optic line, financed by one of the world's richest men, to connect the global financial hubs of London and Tokyo.

 

The project run by Quintillion Subsea Operations is notable in many ways. If completed, it would take the first fiber-optic cable through the Northwest Passage. It would significantly shave trading times between stock markets in Europe and Asia and presumably make subscription a must for financial institutions and high-speed traders, who operate in a world where milliseconds can be worth millions.

 

And it's being quietly backed by Leonard Blavatnik, whose global conglomerate Access Industries owns companies in plastics, oil and gas, fashion, telecom, tech, entertainment and real estate. Blavatnik's Warner Music Group owns the record labels of Bruno Mars, Blake Shelton and Coldplay. As of Sept. 1, Forbes' real-time wealth ranking listed Blavatnik as the world's 58th richest person, with a net worth of $15.6 billion.

 

But what matters most to consumers in the path of Blavatnik's history-making project is the prospect of solid internet connections with more speed and data that cost less than what regional telecom companies can provide through the satellite and microwave systems currently in place.

 

Sarah Bernick, the pastor's wife and Sunday school teacher at Bible Baptist Church in Wainwright, said her household pays $120 a month for a plan through Arctic Slope Telephone Cooperative Association. But she still uses the more reliable connection at the school to make important transactions online.

 

"They don't guarantee service or speed and the service goes out pretty frequently," Bernick said. "All of a sudden for a day we don't have internet and sometimes they have to fly a service person up here."

 

She called the internet "a lifeline," used heavily in the village of about 600 people for buying groceries, clothes, household appliances and, because there is no local bank, paying friends and neighbors for goods and services through account transfers.

 

In Nome, the fiber, encased in copper, steel and polyethylene, comes ashore about 2 miles outside town on the Nome-Council Road. The line snakes past corroded gold-mining equipment, down dirt alleys — to avoid water and sewer lines — and under the wood siding of the TelAlaska building, where equipment to run and power the cable now shares space with every phone line in the city of 3,800 people.

 

Outside St. Joseph Catholic Church in late August, a crew with an excavator and shovels placed a final section of cable overlaid with red warning tape.

 

Quintillion is entering territory held by GCI, the state's dominant telecom company, whose TERRA network provides broadband connections via microwave towers to 72 communities in rural Alaska. TERRA relies heavily on federal subsidies either directly or through programs such as the Universal Service Fund, which essentially gives schools and libraries a discount on communications services by compensating vendors. (TERRA stands for Terrestrial for Every Rural Region in Alaska.)

 

The two companies say there is plenty of business to go around. Martin Cary, senior vice president of business services at GCI, insists that Quintillion will not significantly affect market share.

 

He noted that Quintillion is focused on hub communities, with the exception of Wainwright and Point Lay, whereas GCI serves a much wider group of villages.

 

"Quintillion is not picking up any of the villages, they're just picking up regional centers and that's not a solution for the school districts and for the health corporations because their primary customers are in their villages, which is where we focus — putting complete solutions together for our anchor tenant customers."

 

GCI recently began expanding into Noorvik and Golovin. Construction in Buckland will begin once permitting is complete, according to a GCI press release Friday. The company expects to have TERRA in 84 communities by the end of 2016.

 

Arctic telecom providers are optimistic overall that Quintillion will expand choice and competition, improve service and potentially lower prices.