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Summer construction on the first fiber-optic cable to cross the Arctic has rural Alaska telecom providers promising a huge market shift in a region that is on the underserved side of the digital divide.
As two ships unspool cable onto the floor of the Bering and Chukchi seas, consumers in six coastal communities from Nome to Barrow anticipate cheaper, speedier internet and the ability to download more data without overage charges by the middle of next year.
The economics of bringing internet to rural Alaska are lousy, which is why the federal government, through various programs, subsidizes connectivity. And even then, rural consumers pay high rates for plans with low data limits and download speeds.
But these communities — Nome, Kotzebue, Point Hope, Wainwright, Barrow and the oil industry work camps at Prudhoe Bay — happen to be along the path of a fiber-optic line, financed by one of the world's richest men, to connect the global financial hubs of London and Tokyo.
The project run by Quintillion Subsea Operations is notable in many ways. If completed, it would take the first fiber-optic cable through the Northwest Passage. It would significantly shave trading times between stock markets in Europe and Asia and presumably make subscription a must for financial institutions and high-speed traders, who operate in a world where milliseconds can be worth millions.
And it's being quietly backed by Leonard Blavatnik, whose global conglomerate Access Industries owns companies in plastics, oil and gas, fashion, telecom, tech, entertainment and real estate. Blavatnik's Warner Music Group owns the record labels of Bruno Mars, Blake Shelton and Coldplay. As of Sept. 1, Forbes' real-time wealth ranking listed Blavatnik as the world's 58th richest person, with a net worth of $15.6 billion.
But what matters most to consumers in the path of Blavatnik's history-making project is the prospect of solid internet connections with more speed and data that cost less than what regional telecom companies can provide through the satellite and microwave systems currently in place.
Sarah Bernick, the pastor's wife and Sunday school teacher at Bible Baptist Church in Wainwright, said her household pays $120 a month for a plan through Arctic Slope Telephone Cooperative Association. But she still uses the more reliable connection at the school to make important transactions online.
"They don't guarantee service or speed and the service goes out pretty frequently," Bernick said. "All of a sudden for a day we don't have internet and sometimes they have to fly a service person up here."
She called the internet "a lifeline," used heavily in the village of about 600 people for buying groceries, clothes, household appliances and, because there is no local bank, paying friends and neighbors for goods and services through account transfers.
In Nome, the fiber, encased in copper, steel and polyethylene, comes ashore about 2 miles outside town on the Nome-Council Road. The line snakes past corroded gold-mining equipment, down dirt alleys — to avoid water and sewer lines — and under the wood siding of the TelAlaska building, where equipment to run and power the cable now shares space with every phone line in the city of 3,800 people.
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