KKCC Connecting Villages in a Green Way

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Jay Barrett/KMXT

The company which brought true high speed telecommunications to the Kodiak road system is now working on providing the same to the other six communities in the borough.

Kodiak-Kenai Cable Company, which is owned by the Old Harbor and Ouzinkie Native Corporations, connected Kodiak to the outside world with two fiber optic cables to the mainland two years ago. Now, the company wants to provide increased bandwidth to the villages, but this time through microwave relay towers.

Right now, the villages send and receive telephone, internet, cable TV and even KMXT radio through satellite downlinks, which have speed and bandwidth limitations. Brian Kincade, the chief operating officer of Kodiak-Kenai Cable, says the company is taking on the new project by leveraging its fiber optic experience:

(Sharatin Mountain 22 sec "So as we’ve …surround the island completely.")

He says the infrastructure atop Sharatin Mountain, about 10 miles west of Kodiak City, will cost about 2-million dollars. The cost of the island-spanning loop is about 11-million. Like it did with the undersea fiber optic line, Kodiak-Kenai Cable wants to be a provider to the providers, and attract telecommunication companies to lease bandwidth on their system.

(Demonstration 16 sec "So what’s going on … building those systems out.")

To cope with Kodiak’s notoriously inclement weather, the power of the transmitters will be higher and size of receivers will be larger than systems spanning the same distance. Powering the seven mountaintop relay stations does pose a problem, but Kincaid says the towers will be supplied electricity through a combination of green technologies with a fuel back-up.

(Off the grid 18 sec "We are doing a solar, wind … our own wind turbines.")

Work on the Sharatin Mountain site was stalled for a few weeks because of weather, but Kincaid says he’s found some tents to set up so work can continue there. He hopes to have the first leg up and running by February, and begin working on other legs of the loop next summer.

I’m Jay Barrett.

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