The company has expanded its fibre footprint in four main areas, the first through a wireless backhaul project. The second being through an owned satellite earth station to increase capacity. As well as an expanded fixed wireless presence, fibre to-the-home and an additional wireless backhaul project.
“As one of the largest fibre providers in Alaska, we continue to upgrade and expand our existing fibre-based network,” said Diedre Williams, senior vice president of operations at Alaska Communications.
“This work enables us to increase bandwidth and capacity, connecting government, healthcare, education, commercial and consumer customers with high-speed, reliable and redundant service across Alaska and into the contiguous United States.”
Since January, Alaska Communications has turned up an additional 24 sites for its carrier customer’s 5G wireless network in Anchorage.
These 24 new sites added 8,000 fibre miles to the company’s network, allowing it to reach additional businesses and consumer customers.
“The demand for broadband continues to increase, and we are dedicated to providing a fibre network that meets the needs of our customers both now and in the future,” added Williams.
Specifically, Alaska Communications is actively selling service on its fibre-fed satellite earth station, reducing costs and increasing capacity for customers.
A key part of the company’s rural broadband strategy is fixed wireless for the last mile. To date, Alaska Communications has lit up more than 13,500 locations through fixed wireless in rural communities.
The fixed wireless service sites are mostly fed by extensions of the company’s fibre network. Many of these builds are funded in part through the Federal Communications Commission Connect America Fund Phase II (CAF II) program.
In addition, since January the company has added 1,077 locations to its fibre-to-the-home footprint bringing the total to more than 7,000 locations.
An additional component of the company’s fibre initiative this year include upgrades to its Alaska fibre ring as well as subsea fibre with optical transport network.
