After more than two years of planning, branching underwater internet cables have reached their resting place on the seafloor between Dillingham and the mouth of the Kuskokwim River. It brings the hub community of Bethel, and eventually more than a dozen other coastal Kuskokwim and Yukon communities, one step closer to what the project’s purveyors say will be urban internet speeds and prices for the coastal edge of the state.
“We don’t have anything else here that we can get for the same price as something would cost in Anchorage,” said Ana Hoffman, the president of the Bethel Native Corporation, during an interview in August.
The corporation has partnered with telecommunications provider GCI for the more than $100 million AIRRAQ project.
Sharing a Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta worldview
“AIRRAQ is a string that we use to tell stories to teach lessons to communicate and share,” Hoffman explained. “You can do it independently or with others. It’s something that I did as a girl growing up here with my aunts and grandmother, and other people would show us patterns and teach us lessons through that. And the fact that that’s a string used to tell a story, it seems so appropriate for this fiber network that’s coming to Bethel in the Y-K Delta to be named AIRRAQ, which will be our way to tell our story.”
The first phase of the AIRRAQ project was funded by the federal tribal broadband connectivity program, open to Alaska Native corporations and federally-recognized tribes throughout the country.
“I think ultimately, the AIRRAQ network will bring balance,” Hoffman said. “I think the people that live here are here because they want balance, because you want a balanced work-home life, because you want a balanced indoor-outdoor experience. So this just really will bring that balance to communications.”
Hoffman said that there’s a worldview on the Y-K Delta that “people from across the globe can benefit from,” a sentiment shared by Greg Chapados, the COO and president of GCI. He calls fiber “an enormously empowering thing.”
“I think [it’s] a really great thing for people to have more exposure to a part of the world, to a culture, to a language that has thousands of years behind it,” Chapados said. “And [that] emphasizes the importance of community, the importance of family, the importance of cooperation, and collaboration, because you’re not going to make it if you don’t.”
Bumps along the way
Three phases of the project have been funded, which will bring fiber internet to Bethel and nearby villages, out to the tundra villages, to the coastal villages of Quinhagak and Eek, through Toksook Bay and Tununak, and up the coast to Emmonak. Further proposed phases would expand deeper into the Yukon Delta.
Those future phases are dependent on a few sources of major broadband funding, both through the state and federal government, including the state’s Broadband Equity and Development Program, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utility Service grant program and the federal Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program.
Chapados said that the AIRRAQ project hasn’t been without its issues, even before launch. There have been bumps with permitting, land rights and access. They’re not quite working on the same timeline they were when the project kicked off.
“And then you’re dealing with Mother Nature, who doesn’t respect our construction seasons and our construction plans and says, basically, ‘I’m going to change and you’re gonna have to adapt,’” Chapados said. “And that’s what we’ve done.”
Hoffman said that there has been some serendipity in how the project has adapted – the path of some of the proposed network cables reflects historical travel patterns.
“As projects line up for funding and engineering, the back route from the tundra villages out to the Yukon came up,” Hoffman said. “And it made a lot of sense to me from my experience growing up. There was a lot of trading between Nunapitchuk, Kasigluk, Atmautluak, with Newtok, and then over to the Yukon, there’s a trail there where people go for wood. And so hearing the change in the route, I just thought it fits so nicely with actually the traditional patterns that we use out here.”
Chapados said that they’ve changed the route of the cables to accommodate the new village of Mertarvik, 9 miles from Newtok, which is in its final stages of relocation. And he said that GCI is keeping in mind that more than a dozen communities in the region are at various stages of relocation or managed retreat from erosion or permafrost thaw degrading land.
“I will tell you, nothing is simple as other relocations take place,” Chapados said. “They’re going to be expensive. It’s just – it’s a big deal.”
Anchor tenants
Chapados said that generally, the fiber network will be expensive to run.
“What makes all of this work, what makes these projects sustainable, is the fact that we have what we call anchor tenants or anchor customers,” Chapados said.
The huge regional customers that will balance the books for the AIRRAQ project are the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation and the Lower Kuskokwim School District.
Chapados also said that the partners hope recruitment for major employers like the school district or health corporation could be easier with fiber internet.
“My belief has always been that if you provide totally up-to-date communications for [a] community like Bethel, there will be more opportunity,” Chapados said. “If there’s somebody young in Bethel that wants to be an engineer, this means that he or she doesn’t necessarily have to leave Bethel in order to realize their dreams; they can stay at home.”
Other internet competitors and collaborators
The fiber upgrades will come at a time of some internet upheaval in the region. The increasing popularity of satellite internet providers like Starlink leaves question marks for what the internet landscape on the Y-K Delta might look like in coming years.
And while it may prove a singular step forward for some Delta communities, AIRRAQ isn’t the only tribal broadband project playing out on the Kuskokwim. Upriver, Alaska Communications and the regional Calista Corporation are working on a fiber broadband project that has some overlap with AIRRAQ. Chapados said that competition is good for the projects. In addition to competition, he said that there is also collaboration. Chapados said that there are agreements between the upriver and lower river projects to share networks.
“The telecom industry is classically competition and collaboration, because that’s how networks work,” Chapados said. “You have to interconnect in order to get the biggest–”
Hoffman jumped in: “ – to get the fiber here. We’re in collaboration with Nushagak in Dillingham.”
“Right,” Chapados said.
“And their project – our ability to turn up Bethel[‘s fiber internet] will depend upon Nushagak and Curyung’s ability to get their fiber going,” Hoffman said.
“We’re pulling for them in every way you can imagine,” Chapados said. “We need that connectivity to make the whole network come together.”
And slowly, that network has come together. Over the winter last year, it was in permitting. With the ice road still frozen, the first pieces of fiber were deployed on the tundra. Over the summer, shelters that will serve as nodes for communities have arrived. Hoffman said that she’d heard of people out berry picking noticing the fiber cables out on the tundra.
“It’s happening,” Hoffman said. “And so it’s exciting to be realizing this project and watching it come to be.”
GCI expects fiber internet to be available in Bethel in the first part of 2025.
Chapados said that they haven’t decided where the first connection will be, and they’re “not trying to play favorites.” But if they’re playing favorites, he said with a laugh, “it’ll probably be Ana’s house.”
“No, no,” Hoffman said, waving him off.
