Copper Valley Telecom (CVT) will build on an earlier project and deploy gigabit fiber-to-the-home broadband service to the village of Tatitlek and surrounding communities of the Chugach Census Area of Alaska.
The project on the southern coast of the state in the Prince William Sound area is being financed with a $16.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ReConnect program.
CVT will build on a project that brought 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload service to Tatitlek in 2020. The current project will extend a subsea fiber cable from Valdez to the remote community of Ellamar. It will terminate in Tatitlek. The cable will replace the microwave network that currently links remote communities.
The fiber broadband service will provide symmetrical 1 Gbps service to communities in Alaska.
Copper Valley Telephone does business as CVT. It has provided telecommunications and broadband services to the Valdez and Copper River Basis areas of Alaska for 60 years.
The irony is that the more difficult it is to serve a location, there’s often an even greater need for it to be served. Last month, Telecompetitor spoke to Thomas Lochner, the Director of Alaska’s Broadband Office.
Lochner said that Alaska had 20,475 underserved and 37,781 unserved broadband serviceable locations [BSLs]. The BSLs were divided into four categories:
- Fiber or road: An area that might already have some fiber infrastructure and is typically somewhat easier to access.
- Rural community: More remote, similar to the villages described above that are accessible only by boat or plane.
- Non-community based: These locations are even farther out, distinct from and even more remote than rural communities.
Additional information about Alaska broadband, including state funding resources for fiber and other technologies, awards made, and state-specific coverage, can be found on the Telecompetitor Broadband Nation webpage for the state.
