The Alaska Broadband Office is in one of the final stages before opening up the process to give away nearly a billion in Federal tax dollars to try and “solve” the digital divide in Alaska.
The draft NOFO was recently released. And, it’s clear what the intent is.
We’re not going to fix Alaska’s digital divide. We’re not even going to make a dent.
Almost hilariously, though, the ABO is literally using the tagline “Internet for All” to describe this process. Let’s break that myth.
Fiber Is The Only Way
As we’ve seen from other states that are going through the BEAD process, a massive amount of preference is being placed on fiber.
Excerpt: The State of Alaska was allocated $1,017,139,672.42 to primarily provide fiber to each Unserved location and other technologies if certain circumstances exist.
It is very clearly stated that the broadband office intends to favor fiber focused projects. Even if a better, more sensible technology exists, fiber is definitely getting the favored treatment.
They further confirm it later in the document:
Excerpt: The ABO will prioritize fiber infrastructure awards at or below the extremely high cost per location threshold (EHCPLT) first for projects to Unserved locations, if funding is available, the ABO will also support projects to Underserved locations.
You can get into the scoring mechanisms elsewhere in the documentation and supplementary scoring sheets. But, it’d be hard to compete against a fiber project.
As a network engineer, I’d agree with this from a technical standpoint. Fiber optics are the most superior technology we have for network delivery at this time.
As a sensible person, though, I disagree that this is entirely the right solution for Alaska. Especially in most of the unserved and underserved locations across Alaska.
It’s extremely expensive to deliver it, especially to many of the “unserved” locations that they are talking about.
Who Are Those Unserved Locations?
A relatively good analysis of “unserved” and “underserved” locations was supposedly performed by the ABO.
I’d love to tell you about it and show you all sorts of maps and such,
However, the ABO has been extremely opaque about this mapping project. The GIS data where it is kept is behind lock and key. Us Alaskan’s don’t have access to it.
It’s definitely different from the Federal Broadband Map, however.
But, anyone who knows what is going on knows that it’s mostly all the various villages out there. There’s literally hundreds of them.
It’s all the places that will never, ever (EVER!) make sense to provide connectivity to since the return on investment just isn’t there. Not even in 10 years. Or in 100 years.
These are places where there will not be enough revenue to even support the maintenance of that fiber.
It’s also some larger population centers, too. Such as Bethel and Dillingham.
A lot of these places are quite small. Typical village sizes range from 20 people to maybe 400 people. Obviously places like Bethel and the surrounding communities have more people.
The Cost Of Delivery To Nowhere
No one likes their village being called “nowhere.” If I lived in a village, I wouldn’t like that. It’s their home.
This isn’t a criticism of their home. At all.
But, proverbially speaking, a lot of these places are “in the middle of nowhere.”
Tucked behind entire mountain ranges, hundreds of miles down rivers and in the most distant locations possible. Many are accessible only by chartered flights.
Given that fiber delivery is the most expensive network delivery technology, it’s going to cost an inordinate amount of money to get fiber to these places.
A billion dollars isn’t going to cut it. Off the cuff? If we’re truly going to solve it with fiber? 100 billion probably isn’t even enough. Heck, it might be a trillion dollars. Maybe even multiple trillions.
How To Benefit The Least With The Most
You can see the language that the ABO uses in plain sight.
Every single “unserved” location in Alaska will be served with high speed fiber before we even consider the “underserved” locations.
They even pretend that there’s a possibility that some of that money could be spent on “underserved” locations. When I read that, I almost thought it was a joke.
What this means is we simply are not going to solve the digital divide in Alaska. It’s impossible with this model.
Going about it this way will ensure we’ll spend the maximum amount of money benefitting the least amount of people.
We’re not even going to make a dent in the digital divide this way.
Urban Centers Are People Too
There’s huge swaths of underserved areas in the major population centers across Alaska.
From Anchorage to Fairbanks, even in the “less populous” places like Juneau, Sitka, Kodiak and Ketchikan.
I know this because I am one of them! I’ve also put my nose in the Federal Broadband Map all over the state.
I’ve argued for a long time that to truly solve the digital divide we have to do two things:
- Use the most sensible technologies to serve the greatest amount of people
- Concentrate on where the population exists and where we also have a digital divide. They’re everywhere in the population centers!
I’m not some big brain analyst of anything. The above objectives are literally just common sense.
Fiber makes sense in urban centers. The connectivity is all ready there. The density of housing is much higher. The cost of the outlay is just more sensible in these places.
That might not make sense in the outskirts of an urban area, though. Maybe for them, we use wireless technologies or help existing networks (like coax/cable internet) expand into the underserved areas.
But, in far off places, maybe it makes sense to use alternative technologies like satellite communications.
Cost Benefit Analysis Is Not A Factor
In one of my earlier articles, I argued that the cost of some of these fiber projects could pay for a Starlink connection for those same households for more than 130 years.
Literally, just buy them the service and they pay nothing. For over a century!
They’re all ready using Starlink RIGHT NOW if they wanted to get access to the internet, anyway.
Imagine what Starlink might look like in 100 years? Will fiber even be relevant then? We’re making decisions about things we have no idea about.
Yet, with these projects, we’re going to infuse millions of dollars pushing fiber into all these places. It’s literally the intention of the ABO to spend countless millions to connect 20 people.
It’s anyone’s guess what the monthly recurring charge will be for some of these internet connections. My guess is they’ll be astronomical.
Not because of the cost of getting them there. But, because of the cost to support them.
No one is even considering the economic feasibility for these villages to pay for such things. A lot of these places have median incomes below $20,000 a year.
In a lot of ways, if we’re going to blow a billion dollars, it literally makes more sense to just pay for an existing solution’s service charge!
The Unforeseen Cliff Of Despair
One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately centers around the maintenance aspect of all this fiber.
Even if we pay to get it installed, Alaska will have its way.
Every single year, I see about a half dozen major breaks in connectivity. From landslides to backhoes to anchors dragged through subsea fiber, the concept of “reliability” is tested in Alaska.
More fiber will automatically mean more fiber breaks.
What’s going to happen when the companies aren’t making enough revenue to actually support these connections?
The money is there to put them in. But, there’s no money to keep them working. That has to come from the subscribers.
And that’s why all the big fiber projects we’ve seen thus far (e.g. Nome, Kotzebue, Utiagvik, etc) all have extremely expensive monthly recurring costs.
Maybe I’ll do some math on that later, but my gut tells me that money just isn’t there. Especially with this plan.
The Needle Will Barely Move
Figures estimate that around 30 percent of Alaska’s population doesn’t have access to modern broadband technologies.
This plan is going to move the needle to 29%. Otherwise, it’s barely going to help solve the problem.
I didn’t submit my public comment to the ABO. Instead, I focused on this article.
Because who am I?
I’m not a carrier that’s going to siphon millions of dollars in profit from these projects. I’m not a public employee that will get to parade around how we “solved” the digital divide in Nuniaq, Alaska.
They aren’t going to listen to me, anyway.
This whole thing was guided by the feds. They’re applying lower 48 mentality to a state they don’t even understand.