At the Fiber Broadband Association’s (FBA) Regional Fiber Connect Workshop in Anchorage last week, local broadband executives, tribal leaders, and policymakers came together to share best practices and lessons learned in a state that has unique challenges and opportunities connecting communities and people to fiber broadband.
Alaska has a significantly higher percentage of unserved communities and families compared to the national average of about 9% of communities and families being unserved. The state has received over a billion dollars for broadband, but this funding does not go very far due to Alaska’s immense size, challenging topology (water, ice, snow, mountains), very short field season, and the reality of deploying broadband to over 60 different cultures across Alaska.
Broadband enables education in Anchorage and remote areas, supports telehealth including connections to doctors, research, and emergency preparedness – tsunami warnings the day before the workshop as a prime example. Today, over 60,000 people are without broadband access and nearly 200,000 for whom opportunity needs to be created…