According to data from Pew Research Center, approximately 91 percent of American adults own a smartphone. That statistic is not very surprising, considering the average American would probably struggle to identify a single acquaintance or family member that not only uses a smartphone in their daily lives, but is also unapologetically addicted to it.
But there are large swaths of our country where having access to a fast and reliable cellular network would be considered a luxury. In fact, in some of these places, the concept of having access to the same high speed terrestrial broadband Internet access that connects a large majority of American homes is downright indulgent.
When you look at the percentage of American adults that have access to these technologies, you still see evidence of the same digital divide that has been lamented since the late 1990s.
Part of this disparity is due to financial and other factors, but oftentimes it’s a result of access. And in few areas is the digital divide as obvious and apparent as it is in rural Alaska.
More caribou than people
According to census data from 2023, approximately 35 percent of Alaska’s population lives in rural areas – with the majority of the state’s residents living in the areas immediately around its largest cities, including Anchorage. Considering the current population of the state, that means approximately 260,000 people live in Alaska’s more rural areas. There are currently 950,000 caribou living in Alaska. That means there are 3.5 caribou for every one person living in the more rural and remote parts of Alaska.
Why is this important? Well, the companies that run terrestrial and cellular networks are businesses and not charities. They need to ensure that any networks they install will generate a profit over time. Unfortunately, caribou can’t earn money or pay for Internet service plans, and there simply aren’t enough humans living in the more remote parts of Alaska to justify the expense of running communications networks to more geographically-isolated parts of the state.
As a result, there are small communities across rural Alaska with no access to cellular or terrestrial broadband networks.
In many of these small communities, there are schools, libraries, government offices, and medical facilities that also historically had to go without high-bandwidth connectivity. For years, dial-up Internet was the only alternative, which could take a minute or more to deliver a simple Web site – meaning advanced digital services such as teleconferencing and cloud services were impossible to access.
Satellite connects the unconnected
To help eliminate the digital divide and bring government, education, and healthcare facilities into the 21st Century, SES Space & Defense was tasked with delivering connectivity to these remote areas of Alaska via Geostationary satellites. This delivered more bandwidth and higher speeds than traditional dial-up, but still had lower latency than is needed for some advanced IT solutions and digital tools.
Today, thanks to the proliferation of satellites in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) and Lower Earth Orbit (LEO), SES Space & Defense has been able offer a multi-orbit satellite solution to certain regions of Alaska. In addition, the company has worked to build out a microwave communications network capable of offering high-throughput, low-latency connectivity that is capable of powering even the most advanced digital services and IT solutions without being impacted by weather and other atmospheric conditions.
Together, the combination of satellite services at LEO, MEO, and GEO, and the microwave network, is providing essential connectivity for educational institutions, healthcare facilities, and government agencies and offices. This mission-critical connectivity is enabling many of the same advanced capabilities that organizations in urban and suburban areas enjoy in some of the most remote and austere geographies on the planet.
Leveraging this advanced network, healthcare organizations in remote areas have been able to conduct telemedicine and telehealth visits – bringing specialized care to communities that have never been able to access it before. Educational institutions are capable of conducting virtual field trips and accessing the same online testing and educational resources that are available to other schools and libraries around the world. And government offices have been able to utilize the same applications and cloud services that are streamlining operations and improving workflows for organizations in other, more populated locations.
However, Alaska being as wild and inhospitable as it is meant that delivering this essential connectivity wasn’t easy – and remains a challenge to this day.
Bears like the smell of coolant?
Ultimately, networking equipment and other advanced technologies don’t always perform well in the cold. This is a problem in more remote and rural parts of Alaska, where the temperature in winter can drop to 40 or 50 degrees below zero. Because of these austere environments and harsh conditions, the SES Space & Defense team often needs to physically travel to perform routine, preventative, and emergency maintenance on its equipment.
However, there are no roads in some of the locations where this equipment is installed. In many places, the easiest mode of transportation is a boat on a river or a small plane. But rivers freeze in extreme cold, and small planes can’t fly. This means teams sometimes have to travel by helicopter or snowmobile to conduct routine maintenance and make necessary repairs.
In one instance, the SES Space & Defense team had to travel to a remote area near Fairbanks, AK, to repair damaged equipment. The extreme cold grounded flights, forcing the team to take a helicopter. That helicopter was forced to make emergency landings four times before reaching its final destination due to ice buildup in the difficult flying conditions.
These trips to repair and maintain the network and equipment can happen at practically any time, and for any number of reasons – including a few that are unique to Alaska.
In some instances, cables sagging under ice buildup and snowfall have been physically torn out by wild animals, including moose. In other instances, bears – apparently drawn by their affection for the aroma of coolant – will toy with generator shelters, resulting in damaged or inadvertently disabled generators. Once, a bear turned off a circuit breaker by accident – quite a feat considering its lack of opposable thumbs.
In each of these instances, teams were dispatched to make repairs, turn circuit breakers back on, and get the network back up and running. Whether they took a helicopter, boat, or snowmobile to get there was secondary, as long as the job got done.
That’s because this network is not just a modern luxury or convenience. It’s an essential tool, enabling people in one of the world’s more extreme locations to cross the digital divide and enjoy the same digital services and solutions that are revolutionizing healthcare, education, and constituent service across the globe.