Bringing fiber to Alaska's 'Deadliest Catch' region

GCI is doing more than going the extra mile to bring fiber to the Aleutian Chain in Alaska. In fact, it's going hundreds of extra miles below the surface of the ocean to accomplish the feat. Alaska's top service provider is making significant progress on the so-called GCI Alaska United Aleutians Fiber Project, an initiative that will soon start to deploy more than 800 miles of subsea fiber that will serve as the backbone for 2-Gig broadband and other services for communities in the remote, hard-to-reach region. 

In this case, we're talking about a subsea fiber that will provide baseline connectivity for more than 7,000 people along the Aleutian Chain in the extreme Western end of the state, which includes the Unalaska region and Dutch Harbor of Deadliest Catch fame. 

The $58 million project (funded by a $25 million grant from the US Department of Agriculture's ReConnect program and $33 million of direct investment by GCI) recently reached a key milestone, as more than 3.7 million pounds of custom-built fiber started its sea journey from Germany to Unalaska aboard the 330-foot-long M/V Vertom Thea cargo ship. 

Once the fiber reaches British Columbia, it will be loaded onto two cable-laying vessels to complete its journey across the Gulf of Alaska to Unalaska. 

GCI is in the process of matching its subsea fiber deployment with fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) access networks that will deliver services to homes and businesses along the Aleutian chain. 

Here's a snapshot of topics covered in this podcast:

• The scope of the project and why it's important to the region. (1:30)
• How 2,000 tons of specially-built subsea fiber is being delivered by cargo ship – starting in Germany, and eventually reaching the Unalaska area later this year for deployment by cable-laying vessels. (5:00) 
• How GCI will connect homes and businesses to 2-Gig broadband services once the subsea fiber is deployed and lit up. (10:25) 
• What other services, beyond broadband, that GCI will deliver to homes and business in the region. (17:00)

— Jeff Baumgartner, Senior Editor, Light Reading

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