High-speed Internet project begins in Southwest

ANCHORAGE - Work on a high-speed Internet project for 53 villages in Southwest Alaska will begin this spring, thanks to a $25.3 million federal economic stimulus grant awarded to Sea Lion International, a subsidiary of the Hooper Bay village Native corporation.

"I wouldn't say we were surprised, but we were pleased that the government saw the economical viability of our solution," said Desiree Pfeffer, chief executive of Anchorage-based Sea Lion International, a subsidiary of Sea Lion Corp.

The project is a joint venture with Rivada Networks, a telecommunications firm based in Colorado Springs, Colo., to provide high-speed broadband Internet service to cover a 90,000-square-mile area of Western Alaska, serving an estimated 29,000 rural residents. The village corporation will leverage the federal funds with $6.4 million of its own funds to complete the Southwestern Alaska Broadband Rural Expansion project.

The grant, announced Dec. 18 by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, comes under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act broadband grant program.

Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, cited the grant as "another example of ways we are stabilizing the economy, improving technology, and advancing business through the Recovery Act in Alaska."

Pfeffer said in a telephone interview Dec. 21 that equipment procurement would begin in February, with some of the equipment to be assembled in Anchorage by Sea Lion International, and some in Colorado.

The project is to be completed within two years, employing about 60 people through the development and operation phases.

"Once completed we will have a 24-hour network operations center in Anchorage to support customer service," Pfeffer said.

Each community will have fully self-contained telecommunications equipment requiring no overhead lines or buried cable, housing in small insulated facilities, she said. The buildings, about 10 feet by 10 feet in size, would resemble a cache and the heat generated by the unit itself maintains the facility at operations temperatures, she said.

While no surveys have been done to extrapolate the economic potential of high speed Internet for this area of Southwestern Alaska, Pfeffer said she already anticipates one big cost saving advantage.

"We will be able to do video conferencing between Anchorage and Hooper Bay and Bethel (where board members reside)," Pfeffer said. With round trip air travel from Hooper Bay to Anchorage running at over $1,000 a ticket, plus weather issues which can make traffic time consuming, this will be a big savings for their corporation, she said.

The whole project "means more connectability between the villages and Anchorage or the villages and Washington, D.C., which is the whole point, the ability to bring people together," she said. "People are very excited about it. It's cool, a great project for rural Alaska."