Legislature(2009 - 2010)BELTZ 105 (TSBldg)
02/02/2010 02:00 PM Senate LABOR & COMMERCE
| Audio | Topic |
|---|---|
| Start | |
| SB175 | |
| Overview of Broadband in the State of Alaska | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
| += | SB 175 | TELECONFERENCED | |
| + | TELECONFERENCED |
SB 175-INTERNET ACCESS AUTHORITY/TASK FORCE
2:04:44 PM
CHAIR PASKVAN announced that the purpose of today's meeting is
to discuss SB 175 and to hear a comprehensive overview of
broadband policy in Alaska. He cited US Commerce Secretary Gary
Locke's public statement last month that improving "high speed
Internet access is the lifeblood of today's economy. Having
access to the Internet's economic health and educational
benefits should be as much of a fundamental American right as
attending a quality school."
CHAIR PASKVAN said he believes this fundamental right must
extend to all Alaskans. He said that three-fourths of the
communities in Alaska have populations of less than 1,000
people, and he believes that broadband technology can connect
regions of Alaska together and can connect all of Alaska to the
world. Broadband distributes education, medicine, public safety
and economic opportunities; it provides the ability in the 21st
Century for rural Alaska and all of Alaska to advertise its
goods and services within the state and to the world.
He said people need to understand the end-to-end distribution of
broadband - first-mile, middle-mile, last mile - and understand
the broadband delivery modalities whether it's fiber, radio
frequency, or satellite.
CHAIR PASKVAN said that while SB 175 is before them, he didn't
think there was a need to advance legislation in this area, but
rather to listen to the broadband opportunities from
knowledgeable people and find out what is going on in this area
in the state.
^Overview of Broadband in the State of Alaska
2:06:33 PM
MIKE BLACK, Deputy Commissioner, Department of Commerce,
Community & Economic Development (DCCED), said it was recognized
by the administration and the governor that economic development
opportunities are connected with the availability of reliable
and high speed broadband.
He said for the past six years, the state of Alaska has been
responsible for providing grants from the US Department of
Agriculture (USDA) Rural Utilities Services (RUS) to companies
that were expanding broadband here. Those grants compared to the
American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) monies were
insignificant. With passage of the Stimulus Act that funded two
nationwide programs - the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration (NTIA) and the Department of Commerce
and USDA RUS program - with $7.2 billion, Mr. Black said he
became much more active in its promotion.
MR. BLACK related that when the administration became aware that
these grants would be provided to the state, they formed a
committee that included the Department of Administration (DOA),
the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Regulatory
Commission of Alaska (RCA), and the Department of Commerce,
Community & Economic Development (DCCED) to look into broadband
issues. He pointed out a number of letters in their committee
packets from the Governor to the agencies expressing a lot of
their opinions.
He summarized that the State of Alaska recognized and reminded
the federal agencies that if any state was to be considered
unserved it would be this state and that Alaska because of its
geography and topography; and the extremely small communities
had a customer base that in itself would not attract broadband
on a commercial basis. It's because of the lack of
infrastructure in rural Alaska that much of the commerce one
sees in the Railbelt is unavailable there; broadband could make
a huge difference for these areas that are also suffering the
most from high unemployment and low incomes. They also pointed
out the lack of access to health care and that telemedicine is
really the only avenue that can provide effective health care in
many parts of the state. Even though the State of Alaska and
health care organizations in the state have pioneered
telemedicine, it still remains highly unreliable because of its
dependency on satellite technologies and communities sometimes
are without any service because of satellite malfunction.
MR. BLACK said that conversely small businesses in remote areas
can make up for their lack of access to infrastructure by using
the Internet to market things like Native handcrafts, trips,
ecotourism, and B&Bs. The availability of broadband would have a
positive economic benefit.
Finally, he repeated the importance of broadband in education,
which the federal government recognized by making a special
arrangement for schools to have priority access to satellite
bandwidth, but that unfortunately it is still highly limited.
2:17:14 PM
MR. BLACK related that the department began the process of
working with its DC Office in understanding how this program
would be "rolled out." The state was given the opportunity to
actually comment on the individual applications, but declined to
do that because the department might not be the proper agency to
judge the technical feasibility of such applications and they
didn't want to lend the Governor's name to winners or losers.
He said that they decided to designate some awards to the Denali
Commission because it can conduct broadband mapping and identify
which areas of the state where broadband is available. Also the
Department of Agriculture awarded $88 million to the United
Utilities of Anchorage for middle-mile broadband service for 65
communities in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta area and the Bristol
Bay regions. A $28-million award was made for the Sea Lion
Corporation that serves basically the same area. So the reality
is that they have gotten some applications and have received
some money under the programs, but about $4 billion has not been
awarded yet.
2:20:44 PM
SENATOR BUNDE asked why two awards were given to groups that
served the same area and if they were duplicates.
MR. BLACK answered that the two groups have complimentary, not
competing, proposals for middle/final mile services that
basically distributes the broadband all the way into the
households. However, the state doesn't have access to the
complete proposals, because most of that information is
proprietary.
2:22:15 PM
TESSA RINNER, Director of Programs, Denali Commission, said she
was speaking on behalf of Craig Johnson, CEO, Denali Commission,
on the Commission's mission, what their efforts have been in the
last 10 years of the existence of the Agency and broadband and
how it relates to current broadband efforts, specifically with
regards to the NTIA grant award.
She said the Denali Commission was created in 1998 by an act of
Congress to work on basic infrastructure including planning,
design and construction across the state, training and economic
development initiatives, and government coordination. She said
it is important to note that historically the Commission has had
relatively little involvement in the development of advanced
telecommunications in Alaska, but it is specifically identified
in their mission in the statute.
MS. RINNER said that in the year 2000 the Commission worked in
partnership with the University of Alaska and the state to
conduct a survey of Alaska communities that found that 60
percent of rural communities had unreliable dial up connection
to the Internet. In 2009 the Governor designated the Denali
Commission as the entity that would apply for the funds that are
available through NTIA to every state to map broadband to
essentially determine the amount of unserved and underserved
areas, and that would in essence create a broadband map for the
country that would be presented to Congress in 2011. They
received $1.8 million for this project.
MS. RINNER said the Commission is working with Connected Nation
and the telecommunications providers to on the map project.
Their major role, however, is the creation of a broadband
steering committee that has memberships from state, federal,
telecommunication providers and the Alaska State Legislature's
Senator Paskvan. The initial meeting will happen shortly.
She said one of the items the commission is working on is the
agreement it has with NTIA that will functionally transfer the
funds to it. The committee will have three primary activities
and will produce three specific work products. One will be an
annual status report on broadband in Alaska, second an annual
work plan that will summarize the state, private and federal
efforts to development broadband in Alaska and third, produce an
annual research plan that will provide recommendations on
potential research needs in broadband adoption technology and
other research issues.
2:27:27 PM
One other item the Commission will undertake shortly that
relates to the award is working with UAA's Institute of Social
and Economic that will identify what the benefits and
ramifications are of having broadband in Alaska.
2:28:05 PM
STEVE SMITH, Chief IT Officer, University of Alaska, said
broadband is an infrastructure for the state that is as
essential as roads, health and safety. The University has a
mission to deliver higher education to everyone in the state no
matter where they live and this is very challenging due to the
lack of infrastructure in many areas. Just this morning he
discussed the challenges that the Aleutians campus have because
their education centers that are located across the Aleutians
are unable to get online and use core HR administrative systems
and have to find other means to do that.
The University working together with the Denali Commission and
the Institute of the North sponsored three audio conference
public briefings about the stimulus broadband funding
opportunities and held a workshop at the Anchorage campus to
move this issue forward. The biggest challenge was finding a
"business case" that will work for the capital expense of
putting in the infrastructure and operating it with a very thin
population base. Some carriers have been able to leverage some
of the funds for that, but having enough capital is still very
difficult.
MR. SMITH said he wanted to work with them to build out those
networks but he wasn't interested in having a separate network
for the University. Broadband comes into the state fairly
easily, but getting it out to the western and northern regions
remains a serious challenge.
2:33:46 PM
MR. SMITH said the federal stimulus program has emphasized
working with "anchor institutions" like schools, hospitals, and
safety and security entities that can help bring broadband into
small communities where it can then be spread out to the
individuals within those communities. He explained that the
universities have been at the forefront of broadband development
for a number of years and the UAA has been active with
developing new applications for the next generation of Internet.
He said the carriers have made use of some of these anchor
institutions when they can, but the problem is that the
subsidies Mr. Black talked about go to K-12 schools, public
libraries and rural health. An unintended consequence of these
subsidies is that they create "stovepipes" for broadband
deployment, because they are very specific to those communities
and others cannot make use of it. For instance post secondary
education cannot take advantage of the education subsidy which
is limited to K-12. So students may graduate from their high
school in their village, but not be able to still live in that
village and take courses from any post secondary institution
that could be delivered electronically because they don't have
access to broadband that would make that available to them. They
hope the FCC will address that issue when it comes out with its
national broadband plan.
He said the University welcomes the development of the Denali
Commission task force and supports SB 175. A number of other
states have a broadband task force or committee and they have a
leg up on Alaska when it comes to competing for some of the
federal funds that are and will become available for broadband
deployment.
2:37:36 PM
BOB PICKETT, Chairman, Regulatory Commission of Alaska (RCA),
said most of his comments relate to his role as the chairman of
the Legacy Broadband Work Group. The Legacy Groups were created
by an Administrative Order (AO) in February 2009 to look at a
number of separate areas in the state and hopefully come up with
recommendations that will encourage economic development. This
group consists of representatives from the Department of Public
Safety (DPS), AT&T, Ahtna, USDA, ACS, and GCI, with staff
support by the Commission.
He explained that when this group was formed a lot of things
were up in the air - the stimulus bill just passed and it was
obvious that it had an emphasis on broadband, but the definition
was not there. The group decided to take advantage of the
medical adage "first - do no harm." Most Alaskans are not aware
of the nature of the telecommunications system in the state and
how it is paid for; so they would look at the physical network
and develop a work product that could provide some baseline
information. They looked at barriers to the deployment of
broadband, some potential legislative and regulatory
considerations, financing issues and other mechanisms they
thought would be helpful in this mission. At the end of the
day, the consensus of the group was that broadband is generally
available in urban Alaska - in the more populated areas - not to
mean that there are no problems with spottiness in some areas.
He remarked that Rural Alaska may have services that are
advertised as broadband, but their nature and expense is
entirely different than what is available in urban Alaska. And
he said, "Let's face it, the definition of high speed Internet
access has changed tremendously in a relatively short period of
time."
2:41:35 PM
He explained that they were able to use only half of the $15-
million grant, because of how rapidly the technologies were
changing; and because the original legislative language was so
restrictive, they couldn't get the major telecom companies to
come to the table and even apply. So their plan is to step back
and let some of the dust settle with some of the stimulus
awards, let the broadband mapping activities continue, and see
where they were.
The "final mile" in rural Alaska is generally not the problem,
Mr. Pickett said, but it's the middle mile from the Internet
node to the community itself that has been the bottleneck. He
didn't want to speak for or against SB 175, but instead said
there is value in stepping back and letting the dust settle
before locking things into place. As a regulator he has learned
the law of unintended consequences.
2:42:58 PM
MR. PICKETT said he wanted to speak on federal systems because a
great deal of the funding - over $210 million per year - for
Alaska's telecom system comes through the federal Universal
Service Fund (USF). He said the Commission made annual
certifications to the FCC for the funding. The initial eligible
telecommunication carrier designations (ETC) that are made
primarily to wireless carriers opened up the door to that
subsidy.
MR. PICKETT said he thought new wireless technologies would
develop to help fill in the gaps on the final mile. He said the
FCC is scheduled to come up with the federal broadband plan in
February, but it has been delayed by about a month. There are
talks about reforming the federal universal service (FUS)
mechanism to allow broadband support; that is one of those
things that depending on the details it sounds good and actually
could be a very positive development, but if it is a zero sum
game at the expense of other uses it could have some funding
impacts on existing telecommunications systems.
Finally, he noted that the RCA will take up the topic of issuing
regulations on access charge reform at its meeting this Friday,
and the telecom system has to be in place for that to happen.
The regulations will be released for a 30-day period. It will
shape the environment for the interrelationship between the
local exchange carriers and the long distance carriers.
2:45:46 PM
IKE ICARD, owner, Great Pacific Cable, said he is working with
the Kodiak Kenai Cable Company on a number of projects in the
state. He said the Kodiak Kenai Cable Company wants to extend
broadband equitably throughout the state of Alaska. He said the
company was formed in 2001 and the purpose at that time was to
extend fiber optic telecommunication capacity to the Kenai
Peninsula and Kodiak Island, two areas that represent roughly 10
percent of the state's population that hadn't yet had the
benefit of real broadband access even as currently defined. The
project involved 650 miles of fiber optic cable, mostly
submarine installation extending from the fiber hub in Anchorage
with landings along the Kenai Peninsula - Kenai and Homer -
Kodiak Island - City of Kodiak and Alaska Aerospace Kodiak
Launch Complex - and a return leg that came back from Kodiak
into Seward and back to Anchorage over existing overland fiber
optic cable - for a cost of $37 million. This provided the
first-ever fiber-based broadband capacity to the Peninsula and
Kodiak Island. It was completed in 2006 - on time and within
budget and has operated flawlessly ever since then. The cable
company is organized as a carrier's carrier rather than entering
the retail market with services and competing with existing
carriers or the local incumbents.
MR. ICARD explained that the Kodiak Kenai Cable Company is
merely a system builder, owner and provider of capacity to the
other carriers; today all the major carriers carry traffic to
Kenai and Kodiak over the fiber of the Kenai Cable Company. More
recently over a year ago, the cable company began work on the
Northern Fiber Optic Link project (NFOL). The Stimulus Act
provided an opportunity to extend capitalized broadband capacity
to the vast majority of western Alaska, about 40 percent of the
geographic area of the state. He described that the system will
be a fiber optic cable that extends out of the southern terminus
of fiber on Kodiak Island out to the Aleutian Islands and
Unalaska with landing points in Bristol Bay and ultimately up to
Prudhoe Bay (the northern most extent of fiber trunk line
capacity in Alaska today). The project is tailor-made and
answers the mandates and specifications of the NTIA and RUS
programs that distribute the broadband stimulus funds.
2:50:29 PM
MR. ICARD said they don't yet have word on a grant under the
initial round, but they were heartened to see that the program
recognizes the importance of extending broadband in Alaska
through a recent grant to the Universal Utilities and the Sea
Lion projects. He would have been more gratified if they had
granted funds to the NFOL project. The project is moving ahead
with an aggressive application under the very recently announced
NFOL round 2 funding.
He said they are also working on a larger project that would
extend fiber for the first time over the Arctic Circle between
landing points in Asia, and Tokyo, Japan, with intermediate
landings in Alaska and ultimately to London. The project would
be a substantial improvement on any existing telecommunications
broadband capacity extending between Asia and Europe and greatly
reduce the signal latency that is critically important for
today's commerce.
He said because they have taken the position that it is
critically important that broadband not be limited to one
standard for rural areas and another standard for urban areas,
it is important that a federal broadband strategy recognizes a
broadband standard across the board that doesn't
institutionalize a "sort of a divide" between rural broadband
access and that available in urban areas.
He agreed with Dr. Smith that the NTIA's program focuses on
anchor institutions and that is partly a focus of the second
round of funding. He agreed that while it's important to get
broadband to the anchor institutions it is also important that
these funds be used more broadly to service entire communities
in the rural areas. They also concur that the subsidy programs
have been somewhat "stove piped" in an erratic distribution.
2:54:01 PM
SENATOR THOMAS asked how much a project that stretches from
London to Tokyo costs.
MR. ICARD answered around $1.2 billion.
SENATOR THOMAS asked the payoff anticipated on a project like
that.
MR. ICARD replied sufficient to make it an economic project on
its own. It is not a subject of their applications under the
broadband Stimulus Act.
CHAIR PASKVAN asked if the latency issue makes the Asia, Europe,
North America program so valuable.
MR. ICARD answered yes. He explained that latency for existing
interconnections between Asia and Europe runs on the order of
140-150 milliseconds, and those are a submarine links through
the Mediterranean and Suez or overland through Sakhalin Island
in Russia. The Arctic route provides a very clean express lane
between Europe and Asia and it would provide a gateway into
Alaska through a regeneration station at Prudhoe Bay.
2:56:37 PM
BRENT LEGG, Director, [indisc.] Relations and Development,
Connected Nation, said it is the parent organization of a
subsidiary nonprofit they have established in Alaska called
Connect Alaska. They are primarily based in two different places
in the Lower 48 and Washington, D.C. as well as in Bowling
Green, Kentucky. Their mission is primarily to generate and
support economic development through the expansion of broadband
availability and by increasing the broadband adoption rates in
areas where broadband is available. The Denali Commission has
selected Connect Alaska to partner with them in order to
implement the broadband mapping and data collection processes.
They are the recipient through the Denali Commission of a grant
which provides a total of $1.9 million for broadband data
collection, mapping activities as well as planning activities
and the implementation of the steering committee that was
discussed. Specifically, the broadband data collection and
mapping services total about $1.4 million out of that $1.9
million.
MR. LEGG said the objectives of the mapping project are to form
strong working relationships with all of Alaska's broadband
providers and to support an environment of public and private
sector collaboration on broadband issues among all stakeholders.
They believe that the steering committee the Commission is
forming will do just that. They are also going to create and
maintain the state's first maps of broadband coverage and use
them to help accurately pinpoint any gaps in broadband
availability both in terms of last-mile and middle-mile
connectivity. They are also going to assess the level of
connectivity currently provided to Alaska's community anchor
institutions, a term that the federal government uses to
identify schools, libraries, hospitals, local government
agencies, et cetera. They are also going to work with the
steering committee to route the course of its existence. The
initial broadband mapping and data collection is intended to
produce an initial map and then keep it updated for at least two
years with the possibility of an extension from the federal
government up to five years.
3:00:03 PM
The map will be an evolving document and they will have the
opportunity to refine it over time. It will be available to the
public via the Connectak.org website.
He said they are currently beginning the outreach process to
Alaska's broadband provider community - including DSL, cable,
fixed wireless, mobile cellular wireless, fiber to the premises,
as well as the state's middle-mile connectivity providers - and
that will happen over the next two months or so with the
ultimate goal of releasing the first broadband map for the state
sometime between the end of March and the end of April. These
deadlines are set as part of the DCCED's NTIA state broadband
data development grant program goals.
MR. LEGG said each provider would be asked to sign a
nondisclosure agreement which will protect each of them for
proprietary and confidential data. That data will be used to
create a visual depiction of broadband service availability
which will be applied to a GIS-based map. Once the agreement is
executed with each of the providers, the mapping team will work
to transfer the data to them in a useable format. Once that
transfer process is complete and a visual depiction of broadband
service availability has been depicted and placed onto a GIS-
based map, each provider will have an opportunity to approve the
map before the information is applied to the aggregated
statewide map and before that map is released publicly.
MR. LEGG said once the map is complete, it will be available to
the public via an interactive address searchable online
application called "broadbandsat," which will be available via
the Connectak.org website. Per the federal notice of funds
availability that governs the state broadband data and
development grant program, they are required to submit the
overall collected data to NTIA at the census block level of
detail according to established deadlines. That data will be
submitted to NTIA sometime between the end of March and April
and be continuously updated every two years, and up to five
years if NTIA chooses to make those remaining funds available.
Their engineering and technical services division will work to
validate the data that is represented on the map and insure that
it is accurate. They will also be inviting public scrutiny of
the map to insure that it is accurate and the public will be
able to provide feedback on their website. The inquiries will be
aggregated and they will all be addressed as they come in.
MR. LEGG explained that the "broadbandsat" interactive
application will allow the public and the steering committee to
search for and identify broadband service at a specific
location; if addresses are available, they will be able to
search for connectivity at a specific address. That information
will include available speeds and service provider names at a
specific location. Satellite imagery will be available in cases
where street addresses don't exist. Users will be able to apply
a satellite view on the map and see where individual buildings
and structures are located. This will also allow the steering
committee to understand and track broadband deployment over
time. It will allow them to analyze and prioritize unserved and
underserved areas using population and household density
information. It will also allow them to track "Act" funded
broadband projects and to build and evaluate scenarios to help
score and prioritize future broadband infrastructure proposals,
and allow them in partnership with the University of Alaska to
track broadband adoption rates and barriers to adoption
community by community over time.
3:07:30 PM
MR. LEGG said they are very excited to be engaged in this
partnership; it is going to be a very intense project over the
next couple of months, and it will be customizable to Alaska's
very unique needs.
3:08:00 PM
MARTIN CARY, Vice President, GCI, said in August 2009 through
its wholly-owned subsidiary, United Utilities, applied for a RUS
grant to build a system throughout southwest Alaska. Their
application was funded for an $88 million project with a 50/50
grant/loan (that GCI is guaranteeing) ratio.
The project is called "Tariff Southwest," and it is the
beginning of the implementation of GCI's statewide terrestrial
vision, which is to move as much of rural Alaska off of the
satellite and onto terrestrial facilities as possible. This
project is enabling them to take those first steps. It will
interconnect 65 villages in the Bristol Bay and Yukon Kuskokwim
(YK) regions, Dillingham and Bethel. It is a combination of a
hybrid fiber system and microwave network and will serve 22
villages in the Dillingham region and 43 villages in the YK
Delta.
He explained that today GCI owns a microwave system in YK that
is essentially a broadband island; it has very high speed
connectivity, but it needs to connect to the rest of the world
via satellite. The Terra Southwest project is now going to
enable them to build a fiber system from Anchorage down to
Homer, across Cook Inlet up over the mountains, down Iliamna
Lake and ultimately around the corner interconnecting to the
Delta network and moving all of that traffic off of the
satellite and onto fiber and microwave systems. Along the way
they will be interconnecting those 22 villages in the Dillingham
region.
3:11:28 PM
MR. CARY said work began on the system in 2009 and the year 2010
will be spent primarily on engineering logistics, permitting and
an upgrade of the Delta net system to get it ready to
interconnect with the main backbone that will head back to
Anchorage. In 2011 about half of the microwave sites will be
constructed and the fiber cable will be laid from Levelock to
Pile Bay at the end of Lake Iliamna and then to Williamsport.
Then in 2012, final construction of the microwave sites, the
underwater system that will be interconnecting Homer to
Williamsport, will be brought on line and at that point,
terrestrial broadband service should be available to all 65 of
those communities.
3:12:33 PM
GCI is committing to at least 100 megabits of capacity to each
community and residents should be able to enjoy multi-megabit
Internet service with very low latency as a result of being on
the ground as opposed to being on the satellite. The region will
have improved telemedicine services, improved distance learning
services, more opportunity for the University-system
organizations like AVTEC to deliver services directly to
people's homes. They are hoping for economic development as a
result of broadband deployment into these communities and an
overall better quality of life. He said the system would be
serving about 35,000 residents.
3:14:37 PM
JASON OLSON, Director, Regulatory Issues, AT&T Alaska, said they
are committed to expanding broadband across the US; they believe
that Internet has "the ability to transform our society, our
economy and our way of life." He said that AT&T has invested
over $140 million in the state of Alaska between 2006 and 2008,
and in 2009 they spent tens of millions to add in excess of 20
new cell sites throughout Alaska with more sites being planned
in 2010. He said AT&T continues to roll out its third generation
(3G) mobile broadband network and has significant 3G coverage
already in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau.
It has been AT&T's experience that consumers not only want
broadband, but demand that it be mobile. Following these
industry trends, AT&T has supported the deployment of mobile
broadband in Alaska. Rural Alaska is probably the most
challenging place in the US to achieve this development. He said
that AT&T looks forward to working with all the industry
participants to address Alaska's broadband needs.
3:17:49 PM
TED MONINSKI, ACS Broadband Team, said that ACS is an integrated
and diversified communications company that operates throughout
Alaska. Their wireless communications history began many years
ago, but around 2004 is when ACS deployed its CDMA wireless
platform and began deploying its 3G broadband wireless service.
At that time, Alaska, Fairbanks, and Juneau joined Washington
D.C. and San Diego, California, in being the first markets that
were EVDO [Evolution Data Optimized] broadband capable in the
country.
3:19:46 PM
In subsequent years, ACS has expanded its EVDO to other
locations in Alaska including Kenai, Soldotna, Homer, Sitka,
North Pole, Dead Horse and Kuparek. More recently they have
invested hundreds of millions of dollars to both acquire and to
build undersea cable systems for high speed connectivity
throughout the state. Their instate network has also been
expanded and upgraded to provide fiber optic connectivity
between Anchorage and Fairbanks and between Anchorage and Homer
to facilitate the Internet hand off handoffs to the undersea
fiber systems that take the Internet traffic to the Lower 48
Internet peering locations.
He said that most providers would agree that the cost effective
way to advance broadband Internet access is through wireless
technology. As a result ACS is exploring 4G technology which
should be available in the next several years. It has great
potential to deliver several times the current level of
bandwidth.
Where feasible, he said, ACS deploys its infrastructure to
enhance both within and between communities, but rural areas
remain a challenge. He said that 4G "backhaul" would be as
equally constrained to the extent that the only opportunity to
get from the customer to the Internet peering location is via a
satellite connection. The challenges are driven mainly by
economics and the typical lack of "business cases" that would
support the cost of investment to build the networks. It is not
just construction costs, but the operations costs, as well. A
combination of these costs is typically going to exceed
forecasted revenues. On top of that, a lack of adequate and
affordable backhaul between very rural communities and the
Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau hubs poses the greatest
challenge.
MR. MONINSKI noted that many tasks and goals in SB 175 overlap
the current activities that have been undertaken by the FCC, the
NTIA, the RUS, the Denali Commission and the University of
Alaska. To some extent the role and mission of the two new
entities that are proposed by the legislation also have
overlaps. He encouraged them to analyze them carefully to avoid
duplications where possible.
3:23:48 PM
He said a reference to the "Internet cost equalization program,"
in Section 2 was unclear and needed to be clarified. Also,
pursuing a "dial-up connectivity objective" is a dated
technology and does not produce a broadband connection to the
Internet. But, he said, while dial up is unlikely to get a lot
of attention or a lot or resources going forward, the broadband
goals in the legislation are commendable. But to say that they
can be achieved within the next five years simply doesn't speak
to those underlying economic impediments that he referred to
earlier.
MR. MONINSKI said if the costs of deployments are funded by
grants and ongoing operating expenses are supported by federal
or state universal service programs, the private sector
providers will likely be incented to deploy and operate
broadband that works to most rural locations. The converse is
true, though, that if that funding is not available those
incentives simply won't exist. Current revenue forecasts that
support infrastructure investment are sustainable only with
grant and loan funding and universal service support. He
explained that the current federal universal service system is
supported by a series of surcharges that are paid by business
customers and consumers; it is currently 14 percent and growing.
Also a considerable amount of pushback from communities and
policy makers throughout the country exists that would suggest
people believe that the fund is growing too large; so it is
unclear if current support mechanisms can continue to grow.
3:27:02 PM
MR. MONINSKI stated that absent such multi-level support on the
deployment and the operations, the state could at some point
face the alternative that it might have to support some of these
networks, particularly the middle mile that aggregates the rural
traffic and gets it to the urban hubs and then down to the Lower
48.
3:29:45 PM
CHAIR PASKVAN thanked everyone for their comments and finding no
further business to come before the committee, he adjourned the
meeting at 3:29.
| Document Name | Date/Time | Subjects |
|---|---|---|
| SB 175 Bill Packet.pdf |
SL&C 2/2/2010 2:00:00 PM |
SB 175 |
| Overview of Broadband Vol I.pdf |
SL&C 2/2/2010 2:00:00 PM |
|
| Overview of Broadband Vol II.pdf |
SL&C 2/2/2010 2:00:00 PM |
|
| Overview of Broadband Vol III.pdf |
SL&C 2/2/2010 2:00:00 PM |