Work on laying undersea telecommunications cable is set to begin in Southeast Alaska waters this month. The $33 million project aims at placing 750 miles of fiber optic cable on the ocean floor, GCI (News - Alert) officials announced today.

 

The project will connect five more communities to the Alaska United West line that currently connects Alaska to the Lower 48, providing alternate routing and overflow traffic-handling capabilities for residents of these Southeast communities. GCI expects the system to be complete by November 2008.

 

Cable residents in Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Angoon and Sitka would be able to enjoy high-speed connections for Internet, phone and video; in Juneau, residents will benefit from additional fiber optic cable creating a self-healing fiber ring within Southeast Alaska.

 

"This fiber optic network will provide new and faster services to more than 50,000 people in Southeast Alaska," said Richard Dowling, GCI's senior vice president of corporate development in a statement. "The addition to our network is another important step in creating and maintaining a self-healing telecommunications network."

 

Fiber optic technology uses light pulses to transport digital information from one point to another. Fiber optics are thin filaments of glass through which light beams are transmitted. Advantages of fiber include high information carrying capacity (bandwidth), very low error rates and insensitivity to electromagnetic interference.

 

"The quality of life and the potential for economic development increase as community access to telecommunications services increase," said Dowling. "From small business owners looking to increase their client base to employees who can be hired to work remotely via telecommunications, a robust network positively affects all Alaskans."

GCI is one of the largest telecommunications company in Alaska. GCI operates Alaska's most extensive terrestrial/subsea fiber optic network. The fiber network extends from the North Slope oil production facilities through Fairbanks, Juneau and Anchorage.

 

The company's satellite network provides communications services to small towns throughout rural Alaska. The company is in the process of constructing Alaska's first, truly statewide mobile wireless network which will seamlessly link urban and rural Alaska for the first time.

 

GCI is also the leading provider of communications services to enterprise customers, particularly large business customers with complex data networking needs.