Roll Call Alaska 2013

The phone service in Alaska has made major improvements in the last 50+ years that I have used it on occasions. When I first was in Nome, in 1962, only one phone call at a time could be made long distance on the Nome to Fairbanks line. You called the local operator, there in Nome and they would connect to your number when the line was available. Then they would call you on the local system and connect you. This could be an all day process. LOL

From Nome to Fairbanks the phone line was US Military, the old "White Alice Communications System" (WACS) in Air Force acronyms. Up until the mid 60's if you wanted to make a long distance call in Anchorage, you had to go to the phone office down town and the operator there would place your call for you. In Nome, in the early 60's I paid $21usd for a 3 minute call so I didn't make very many of them. The US Military had first strung a telegraph line between Nome and Fairbanks, prior to the White Alice installation. Even to this day, you can still find old remnants of the telegraph line laying on the ground, such as copper wire, glass insulators, etc.

Don't remember just when it was but the Air Force decided to get out of the phone business, due to satellites being launched and could carry their communications better to their remote Alaska posts/bases, etc. So the put the WACS system up for sale and it became the Alaska Communications Service, ACS. In recent years the name changed to just AC, Alaska Communications.

Over the years AT&T and Cellular One have traded Alaska back and forth to stay away from monopoly charges in some of their Lower 48 areas of service. Some years Alaska would be Cell One and other AT&T, which it presently is.

GCI has been spending big dollars putting in cell service to all the bush communities where it has been a big hit. Back in the days with the Alaska oil money was flowing into Juneau faster than they knew what to do with it, several of the rural legislators, came up with the idea of putting TV into all the villages, at state expense. Satellite to the village location and then over the air rebroadcast throughout the village. It is almost magic what can be accomplished with enough money at times. So in recent years GCI got permission to use the State of Alaska's satellite links, up and down, to piggy back their phone system to and it is supposedly finished. I know I can now call friend in the villages and have as clear a call as one here locally. Also gave the villages data/Internet service.

So today, as Jason mentioned, you have the three basic tower owners, which other phone carriers rent space on for their clients from out of state. Doesn't seem to matter much, when visiting, what phone carrier you are with, as you cell phone will work, if a signal is available. But I still find many areas without a signal to use, but also find signals in places I wouldn't expect them, along the pipeline corridor for example. Those are probably there for Home Land Security measures.

Alaska is not a good market for phone companies as there are too few people in the state, just over half a million potentially customers. Florida alone has 19 million potential customers. So without government help ($$$) it is difficult for a company to justify major expenditures of funds to improvements in Alaska or northern Canada.

Joe explained this to a tee on communications throughout the state and how it was in the past, as a couple of old time pioneers told me similar stories about the communications system of old, sometimes sending a letter thru postal would be faster communications.

When I first arrived in 1982, they were still using party lines on the outskirts of Fairbanks (even the pay phones were party line tied), and you still had a 30 percent chance of not getting thru attempting to call long distance to the states thru the late 1980's...the civilian phone companies statewide had only a handful of outgoing links versus the demand of growing service at the time...The military were using the ? autovan ? system which was considered more reliable for their direct lines.

There was an advantage to it when the outgoing calls went thru though, calling from Alaska (other than remote villages) to the states was 3 to 5 times cheaper versus calling from the states to Alaska.

Perhaps Joe might even know of or personally knew a man named Ed Parsons, I worked for him upon a short timeframe when he had his own radio station at Oil City on Dale Rd. near Fairbanks Int'l Airport when 95.5FM was first launched (KINQ), he was a communications engineer as he showed me his 2 page "brief" resume and this man had many impressive credentials....Upon the Trans Alaska Pipeline Service Project being planned in the 1970's, he told the officials and advisors that he could make a communication system work by using only three relay towers for the proposed 800 mile pipeline area, most people told him it couldn't be done with only three because of the terrain and mountain ranges in between.....he proved them wrong.

As far as internet service providers, DSL was not available in Alaska until the late 1990's as I recall (Anchorage and Fairbanks only had DSL available at that time which only ACS provided)...along the outskirts you were lucky enough to have any dial up, in which I first obtained internet dial up in 2001 and that was with AT&T 20 miles out of town...AT&T was real nice because they never advertised service in the Fairbanks area and hardly anyone knew about AT&T service, while ACS and GCI were the only other two major ISP's for the Fairbanks area (although Anchorage and Juneau had AOL available for local dial up servers).

During peak usage or daytime hours for dial up at the time, those who had ACS or GCI had booting off problems from time to time as us minority AT&T users never had a problem....their dial up was supreme and rarely had a connection problem at that.

GCI dial up was the cheapest priced and had the most customers, especially with their long distance packages and competitive priced the lowest too, however this was back in the early 2000's as GCI service was not all that according to people I had talked to....and once ACS bought out PTI around the same timeframe, they cornered practically all the phone landlines in Alaska, and GCI was actually leasing the phone lines from ACS so they can provide their customers.

I first got DSL in 2002 as I believe I was the first one in my community area to obtain it, as one neighbor down the street last year told me he was on a waiting list for a year to obtain DSL, he was appalled to find out that I had DSL for 9 years at that time, less than one quarter mile away.

My friends in Anchorage would never sign up with GCI because they had known to have more problems than any other service at that time.

GCI had invested lots into providing village areas like Joe mentioned, as one time I gotten a bill from them for $45 (for like 18 minutes) when my girlfriend called me collect from Bethel, my long distance provider didnt send a bill which was to my surprise and didn't expect GCI billing me, thats when I found out about them expanding in the remote locations via state lawmakers signing a bill to allow GCI to obtain the rights....Then sometime after that GCI sent me another billing for a flat $2,000,000 that was due, boy did I complain about that one as I wasn't even a GCI customer, they told me they would reverse the charges.

GCI has cornered the high speed cable/internet in the Fairbanks area and has very reliable service now from what people told me, they just expanded beyond North Pole for cable service this past summer and provides internet up to 22Mbps speed, but there is no unlimited usage package from what I understand upon a flyer posted on my door so I will not switch at this time....I can still live with my 1Mbps speed that I have.

I would say yeah the phone service has dramatically improved over the years here in Alaska, but for cell phone and satellite link users it could still be hit and miss wherever you travel statewide....AT&T sure didn't hesitate to expand their communications 4G network in Alaska as they seen the demand.

Here in the far north, it is a blessing just to have some form of coverage or a road to drive on, as things can change unexpected on short notice as far as any disruption or shutdown may occur.