Alaska villages to get high-speed Internet

Their joint venture, Rivada SeaLion, plans to deliver high-speed wireless to 53 Southwest Alaska villages in an area ranging from Emmonak to Dillingham.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Friday that the $25.3 million stimulus grant to Rivada SeaLion will create 60 jobs in the region and enable village residents and business owners to access college courses, online medical consultation and other services that require a high-bandwidth Internet connection.

Rivada SeaLion is one of 2,200 national applicants for stimulus grants to extend high-speed Internet in rural areas and other communities that lack it. The first round of grants -- $182 million out of $2.5 billion scheduled to be awarded competitively over the next 18 months -- was announced this week by the Department of Agriculture.

"My phone has been ringing off the hook. Villages are excited about it. My board is excited about it," said Desiree Pfeffer, chief executive of Anchorage-based Sea Lion International. Her firm is a subsidiary of the Hooper Bay village Native corporation, Sea Lion Corp., which specializes in federal contracting. Her firm's joint-venture partner is Rivada Networks, a telecom firm based in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Rivada Sea Lion plans to spend $6.4 million in addition to the federal grant to build the project, Pfeffer said.

Instead of expanding that coverage using new fiber-optic cables or microwave towers, the joint venture plans to use satellite-based technology, she said.

Many rural residents in Alaska are limited to slow, dial-up Internet service or have no Internet at all, said Alex Hills, a Carnegie Mellon University professor and consultant who has worked on Alaska telecom issues for decades.

That holds back the rural economy, because for any kind of business development, "it's hard to do much without the Internet," Hills said.

He views the federal stimulus dollars as a "huge opportunity" for Alaska.

At least 28 Alaska entities applied for the federal stimulus grants, including Native corporations, tribes, city governments and companies ranging from Barrow to Delta Junction to Ketchikan. Their grant requests vary wildly -- from projects costing hundreds of millions of dollars to lay fiber-optic cable in the ocean to projects costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring high-speed Internet to small towns like Ruby and Gustavus.

With the bulk of the federal stimulus broadband grants still to be awarded, "I have high hopes that this is just the beginning for Alaska," Hills said.

Find Elizabeth Bluemink online at adn.com/contact/ebluemink or call 257-4317.