Southwest Alaska gets land-based broadband access

Southwest Alaska is one of the more remote areas of the country.  Satellite communications for Internet access has been the only way for this area to communicate with the world’s commerce sites.

Thanks to stimulus funding through the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service, direct connection to the Internet is now possible for high speed usage.  The TERRA-Southwest project received $88 million funding for the middle-mile connection to the outside world.

United Utilities Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Communication, Inc. built the link 404-mile fiber link between Homer to Levelock in Bristol Bay.  Testing should take around two weeks and then the whole area can finally get some decent quality broadband access.

The first inaugural video conference call was between the Alaskan Governor Alaska Governor Sean Parnell in Juno and Gene Peltola, president of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation (YKHC) in Bethel.  YKHC will use the connection for two weeks to wring out any glitches and then the rest of the town will be able to use the connection.

Gene Peltola told Governor Parnell “Getting Southwest Alaska off satellite and onto TERRA-SW is a major accomplishment for GCI and its subsidiaries. YKHC will be one of the largest beneficiaries of this new network. It will allow us to continue expanding the use of telehealth applications including video conferencing with doctors, teleradiology, telepsychology, implementing new electronic health record applications and much more.”

Clearly, Southwest Alaska’s healthcare will get a boost.