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Connecting Alaskans
Telecommunications in Alaska from Telegraph to Broadband
By Heather E. Hudson UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Heather Hudson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60223-269-3
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
How close they sound!
— Woman in an Alaska village participating in a statewide audio conference, 1980
From Telegraph to Broadband
Alaskans have pioneered in the use of telecommunications for rural development from the first telegraph lines across the tundra to satellite links for telephony and broadcasting to the Internet and broadband era. In the early years of the first army forts and trading outposts, the telegraph was a vital link for the U.S. military responsible for governing the new territory, and for traders to order supplies. The telegraph and later two-way radios brought news of the outside world. As wireless communications spread, doctors at regional hospitals and village health aides and teachers used two-way radios to get help during emergencies. In the 1970s, Alaskans experimented with NASA satellites to introduce basic telemedicine and distance education. State officials, researchers, and broadcasters then successfully advocated for commercial satellite service to extend reliable telephone service and television throughout the state, including the most remote villages. Today, distance learning over the Internet extends educational opportunities to isolated communities, village entrepreneurs market crafts and ecotourism over the Internet, and rural businesses from commercial fishing to mining to retail stores manage their logistics, banking, and payroll online.
Overcoming the challenges of connecting Alaskans scattered in remote communities to each other and the rest of the world has required both technological ingenuity and a commitment to provide service where networks are costly to build and maintain, and customers are few. But the story of connecting Alaskans involves much more than technological innovation and geographical challenges of vast distances and extreme climate. It includes advocacy by government agencies and the private sector, innovative strategies to attract investment, persistence by Alaska politicians and entrepreneurs, and creative techniques of putting telecommunications to use for Alaska's development.
In the mid-1800s, the telegraph introduced the era of electronic communications, as wires were strung along roads and railroad tracks in Europe and North America. In 1861, the transcontinental telegraph reached California, replacing the Pony Express, which took ten days to carry messages to the West Coast. Meanwhile, explorers and traders in Alaska could wait a year or more for news from the outside world or directives from their headquarters in St. Petersburg or London. However, it was not the communication needs of the northern frontier that caught the imagination of entrepreneur and adventurer Perry McDonough Collins, but an opportunity to link the United States with Europe. Early attempts to lay a submarine cable between Newfoundland and Ireland had failed, leaving a window of opportunity for an alternative solution — a terrestrial telegraph network from the U.S. Northwest through British Columbia and the Yukon Territory, across what was then Russian America, with a short submarine link across the Bering Sea to Siberia and then traversing Russia to Europe. Collins managed to convince Western Union to put up the venture capital to attempt to achieve his breathtaking vision of stringing telegraph wire through vast expanses of unexplored northern wilderness. Survey and construction crews were soon working their way north through British Columbia, while a team of surveyors and a naturalist explored routes up the Yukon River from the Bering Sea, and two teams pushed through the wilds of eastern Siberia. But the northern venture was soon abandoned. The transatlantic cable was finally laid successfully in August 1866, although the crews in Alaska did not receive orders to abandon their work and equipment until 11 months later.
Soon thereafter, in 1867, Russia sold Alaska to the United States, but it was 35 years before a telegraph line would actually be built across Alaska. The U.S. Army, responsible for maintaining law and order and providing many public services in the territory, needed to link its posts and forts within Alaska and to connect them with the rest of the United States. Alaska governors repeatedly asked for funds to build a telegraph line in their annual reports to the U.S. Department of the Interior. The first Alaska network connected at the border with a Canadian telegraph line through the Yukon Territory to Skagway, where messages had to be sent by ship to Seattle. Eventually, submarine cables were laid from southeast Alaska to Washington State to complete an all-U.S. route. First known as WAMCATS (the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System) and later ACS (the Alaska Communication System), the network carried both civilian and military traffic but was owned and operated by the military until privatized by an Act of Congress in 1969 and sold to RCA (the Radio Corporation of America).
For much of the twentieth century, Alaska's communications system resembled government-owned networks in Europe rather than the U.S. commercially owned and operated networks. Like European PTTs (post, telegraph, and telephone systems), the ACS received federal government allocations for operations and maintenance and could not reinvest its own revenues, but instead had to turn them over to the U.S. Treasury. Despite growth in Alaska's population and economy, there was little incentive for the military to upgrade and expand facilities for civilian services. However, World War II and the Cold War did provide the rationale and funding to improve military communications, with new technologies such as the White Alice troposcatter system and the U.S. portion of the DEW (Distant Early Warning) Line built to enhance national security on the northern Pacific and Arctic frontiers.
High-frequency (HF) radios had been the only link between most villages and doctors, police, and government agencies. These two-way radios were often both unreliable and inaccessible; the aurora borealis interfered with the signals, and the radios were typically kept in a teacher's residence or other private location and were not available for public use except in emergencies. The 1970s brought much-needed investment in Alaska's networks, but also a new wave of technological innovation, as satellite technology provided much greater bandwidth between Alaska and the rest of the United States. Comsat's Bartlett earth station near Talkeetna initially connected Alaska with the outside world on Intelsat's Pacific Ocean satellites designed for international connectivity among countries of the Asia-Pacific region. Tests of transportable Comsat earth stations and experiments on NASA satellites demonstrated that satellites could also bring reliable voice communications and broadcasting services to Alaska villages.
Experiments using NASA's ATS-1 satellite to link village clinics to regional hospitals demonstrated that reliable voice communications could make a difference in rural health care, not only to get help in emergencies but to enable doctors at regional hospitals to advise village health aides on diagnosis and treatment of their patients through daily "doctor calls." Educators and broadcasters also experimented with the NASA ATS-1 and ATS-6 satellites to transmit community radio programs and educational videos to schools and community centers. Participants in these experiments became advocates for permanent satellite facilities for all of Alaska's remote communities. Yet demonstrations and experiments were short term; turning them into stepping stones to operational service required the commitment and ingenuity of federal and state government officials, Alaska business leaders, academics, and researchers. Their efforts culminated in an appropriation by the Alaska legislature in 1975 of $5 million for the purchase of satellite earth stations for more than 100 villages; the satellite facilities were installed and operated by RCA Alascom.
With the villages connected, Alaskans began to harness communications technologies to serve the needs of rural residents, businesses, and public services. Telemedicine equipment was installed in all village clinics, so that today, Alaska has one of the world's largest telemedicine networks, linking more than 240 sites. As the result of a court case settled in 1976, village schools were required to offer kindergarten through 12th grade, but teachers had little instructional material about Alaska, and no science labs. To help fill the void, in the 1980s, the LearnAlaska project produced video programs for village schools and licensed hundreds of hours of educational programming transmitted by satellite that teachers could download and record for later use. The Rural Alaska Television Network (RATNET — perhaps not the most fortunate choice of acronyms) was established so that villages could receive network television. Native representatives selected a mix of news, sports, and entertainment that was transmitted on a single satellite channel and rebroadcast in the villages. Alaska educational and commercial broadcasters solved the problem of how to offer television programs from all of the networks on one satellite channel without violating network distribution agreements by affiliating each receiving site with all of the networks. State agencies began to hold hearings using audio conferencing facilities in communities around the state so that residents could testify without having to take long and expensive flights to Juneau. Marveled one village participant: "How close they sound!"
With the advent of the Internet era in the late 1990s, Alaska was once more a communications pioneer in offering online access to state government services ranging from hunting and fishing licenses to applications for annual Permanent Fund disbursements. Alaskans began to sell products including qiviut (muskox wool) scarves and hats, smoked salmon, and wild berry products online, and to promote winter activities such as viewing the Iditarod sled dog race and the northern lights, as well as Alaska summer vacations and adventures. Alaska's major commercial enterprises in aviation and shipping, fisheries, oil and gas, mining, retail merchandise, banking, and tourism now use communications networks for logistics, back office support, data analysis, reservation systems, financial transactions, and other services.
A new program mandated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 introduced subsidies for Internet access to schools and libraries. Alaska soon had the highest percentage of participating schools in the country, most of which were in isolated villages where they connected to the Internet via satellite. Today, Alaska remains one of the highest per capita beneficiaries of the Schools and Libraries Program, also known as the "E-rate." Another federal universal service fund subsidizing connectivity for rural health facilities supports Alaska's telemedicine and telehealth networks; Alaska now receives the largest absolute amount of funding as well as highest allocation per capita of any state from the Rural Health Care program. And the High Cost Fund has provided critical subsidies to companies providing local telephone service where costs passed on to customers would otherwise have made the price of local service exorbitant. Today, the focus of federal subsidies to providers is on extending affordable access to broadband, with new subsidy regimes being introduced as part of the implementation of the National Broadband Plan.
Rural Alaskans continue to adopt new technologies and services as they become available in their communities. Most villages now have cellular service, although coverage remains limited offshore and on the land and rivers where emergency communications in harsh weather could save lives. And as rural Alaskans seek to participate in an increasingly information- driven global economy, they have realized that they need access to broadband. The goal of providing universal access to broadband that is both affordable for users and sustainable for providers is the latest Alaska communications challenge.
Overcoming Challenges
Alaska's vast expanses, terrain ranging from tundra to mountains to dense rain forest, and unforgiving climate have posed challenges to the planners and builders of its telecommunications networks since the earliest days. Equipment shipped to the Alaska coast had to be hauled inland by mules or dog teams. Anchoring telegraph poles meant melting holes in the permafrost or building wooden tripods. A submarine cable across Norton Sound that kept breaking from the pressures of waves and sea ice was replaced with one of the world's first commercial wireless circuits to connect Nome with St. Michael. Further innovations in wireless technology brought the means to extend the networks, with White Alice troposcatter antennas and microwave relay towers. But it was satellite technology that made reliable communications for all of Alaska's settlements not only possible but achievable when innovative engineers designed small earth stations that could be assembled from components flown to villages in bush planes. Today, planners attempting to extend broadband to every community face similar challenges to power mountaintop repeaters and lay optical fiber across tundra and under grinding coastal ice.
The federal government has played many significant roles in Alaska telecommunications. The military both funded and operated the facilities that provided commercial communications services until 1969. Threats to national security prompted construction of the White Alice troposcatter network and the DEW Line. NASA satellites demonstrated the benefits of this new technology for reaching remote communities and provided the evidence state officials needed to make the case for investment in commercial satellite facilities. Federal loans for rural phone companies helped cooperatives and small "mom and pop" companies to install local networks and later to upgrade their facilities; federal subsidies for high-cost services have helped Alaska carriers to survive while keeping services affordable for their customers. Alaskans have also relied on federal programs to subsidize Internet access in schools and libraries and connectivity for rural health centers, and recent federal grants and loans have helped to extend broadband.
Early governors of the Alaska Territory emphasized the need to connect Alaska with the rest of the world in their annual reports to Washington, DC. The chiefs of the Army Signal Corps reported on their progress in installing the telegraph networks across frozen tundra and mosquito-filled swamps. Later, they pressed the U.S. Department of Defense for communications facilities to protect Alaska and the Arctic. After statehood, Senators Bartlett, Stevens, and Gravel became strong advocates for satellite communications to reach all of Alaska's settlements with telephone and broadcasting services. Governors Miller, Egan, and Hammond recognized that communication technology could help to advance the economic development of the state. In the 1980s, the legislature created the Telecommunications Information Council (TIC); in the 1990s, the lieutenant governor headed a revitalized TIC that produced a technology plan for the state.
The private sector, of course, was also critical to the expansion of facilities and operation of services. From the earliest days, the military contracted with private suppliers to build its networks, including the early submarine cables from southeast Alaska to Seattle. Local telephone companies founded by Alaska entrepreneurs sprang up to connect households and businesses to the military-owned Alaska Communication System (ACS). When the privatization of ACS ended the military's role in civilian communications, RCA Alascom became the state's long-distance carrier. GCI, formed by Alaska entrepreneurs who believed there were opportunities for new entrants even in Alaska's small market, became the first long-distance competitor in 1982. Today, several companies provide mobile communications services. Local radio and TV stations affiliated with national networks at first received news and sports by teletype, with the first video programs on tape delivered by plane. Satellite communications brought live programs from the outside and the formation of Alaska communications organizations to share content within the state. Business proprietors led by broadcaster A. G. ("Augie") Hiebert played key roles in advocating for satellite facilities for Alaska.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Connecting Alaskans by Heather E. Hudson. Copyright © 2015 Heather Hudson. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA PRESS.
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