Communities on the east side of Kodiak Island will be connected to a new fiber optic cable through a project between Old Harbor Native Corporation and Alaska Communications, formerly Alaska Communications Systems or ACS. The project will bring broadband internet to five Kodiak Archipelago communities, two of which have no fiber connections currently.
Alaska Communications’ pre-existing fiber landing station in Homer, which is part of the company’s Alaska to Oregon fiber network, will mark the start of the 155 miles of subsea cable that will connect to Ouzinkie – just north of the city of Kodiak. Ouzinkie is already part of GCI’s fiber project and will have a fiber cable landing station as part of the company's AU-Aleutians project.
Alaska Communications will lay more fiber around the east side of Kodiak Island, connecting to Chiniak, Women’s Bay, Old Harbor and Akhiok. According to a press release, the cable will specifically make landfall in Narrow Cape, which is near the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska, Old Harbor and Akhiok. The project will also set up a last-mile fiber network for homes in Womens Bay and Chiniak to access as well.
Heather Marron, manager of corporate communications for Alaska Communications, said establishing this second cable from Homer to Kodiak Island will bring broadband to new communities and create a backup option for the archipelago. GCI currently owns the only fiber cable connecting Homer to Kodiak through the Kodiak Kenai Fiber Link which starts in Anchorage and ends in Seward.
“Fiber backhaul will enable improved speeds in these communities and the route was chosen; it’ll be a combination of both subsea and terrestrial fiber," Marron said. "And this is the second fiber route into the island of Kodiak and it will provide much needed redundancy for the island.”
Subsea cables are not immune to breaks or disruptions, as proven by Quintillion’s months-long internet outage in June of 2023 which was caused by issues with a section of its cable between Nome and Prudhoe Bay. A similar break occurred somewhere in the Beaufort Sea again earlier this month.
The $64.7 million fiber project, referred to as Project Nunapet, meaning “our lands” in Alutiiq, doesn’t yet have a start date and it isn’t likely to be completed until 2029. In a press release Old Harbor Native Corporation said it chose the name Nunapet because, “it represents how the fiber optic cable will connect people to each other via the land and sea, a sacred connection they have shared for time immemorial.”
Separately, GCI is also finishing up its AU-Aleutians Fiber Project to connect communities on the west side of Kodiak Island to a subsea cable that stretches from Kodiak, around the top of the island west to the Aleutian chain, ending in Unalaska. The company began construction in both Port Lions and Ouzinkie last August.
Both fiber projects involve Tribal entities; the Native Village of Port Lions is working with GCI and Alaska Communications is working with Old Harbor Native Corporation, one of the Native village corporations established by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. And both projects rely on grant funding from the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, under the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which was included in the recent bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Akhiok and Old Harbor currently don’t have access to a subsea fiber cable. And Marron said the fiber project will bring gigabit internet speeds to those rural communities comparable to speeds in Anchorage or other urban areas.
“These locations are currently served with an aging microwave system. Chiniak and Women’s Bay are served by copper lines which is an older technology," she explained.
Old Harbor Native Corporation’s recently hired chief executive officer Kristina Woolston, said the fiber project will benefit the community in a number of ways.
“We are excited about the opportunities for the community. We can truly look to expand health and safety, transportation opportunities, business development," Woolston stated. "There are things that we probably haven’t even imagined yet that may one day be possible with true broadband coming to our community.”
In a press release she added, “the project is critical to the retention of youth, supports the needs of our Elders, and will provide social, cultural and economic development opportunities for our people, improving the lives of nearly 600 households, businesses and health and human services organizations.”
Woolston said the corporation is waiting on more details to determine when the project could break ground as the initial grant award process will take several months to complete, and to see if the funding will be affected by President Donald Trump’s executive order that halted federal money tied to the Inflation Reduction Act.
For now she said she believes the Nunapet fiber project’s funding will not be affected by the order.
