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Late last year, Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr got an "earful" from remote Alaskan residents who were concerned with how poor their access to the internet is — and they weren't wrong. Alaska has, on average, some of the slowest internet connections in the country, primarily due to its distance from the rest of the continental United States.
But remote Alaskans may see faster speeds soon. MTA Fiber Holdings announced today that it would build the "first and only all-terrestrial" fiber optic network running from Alaska and into the Lower 48. The line will begin in North Pole, Alaska and will travel through Canada, connecting with Canadian carriers, where it will finally connect with "any major hub" in the US. A vast majority of Alaska's current connections to the global internet either run through a handful of submarine cables, satellites, or wireless connections.
"This is a major step for Alaska that will ensure future capacity requirements for MTA members and can support the continuing growth of broadband across the state of Alaska," MTA CEO Michael Burke said in a statement.
According to the press release, only internet traffic that both originates and terminates in the US will be carried over the network.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 05 2019, @02:52PM (1 child)
According to census data, there are 221,600 households in Alaska. That’s roughly 450Mbit/s per household. The current average downloads speed in Alaska is 25Mbit/s. So to actually fill this new pipe, *every* Alaskan household would have to get an 18-times faster last mile connection, *and* all those households would need to use the full capacity of their connection *at exactly the same time*.
Apparently, 95% of US internet consumption is video, and 4K streaming is about 15-20 MBit/s. So this would mean that at a single point in time, every household in Alaska would need to watch THIRTY 4K streams simultaneously.
Why would someone build a pipe that can carry a quarter of all US Internet traffic to a state that has 0.2% of the US population? The only rational explanation is that indeed, Alaska would be a great place to serve content FROM.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 05 2019, @09:43PM
There's something to be said for future proofing.
Additionally, you have governments, businesses, and universities that could be sending a lot of data over the cable.
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