The Federal Communications Commission is trying to address Internet inequality on a national scale by shifting $4.5 billion in government subsidies away from traditional telephone networks toward Internet-based systems. ...
That's a big deal for Alaska, where less than 75 percent of residents have access to broadband.
What qualifies as broadband, though, will be different for Alaskan communities served by satellite, which includes most communities off the road system.
In general, the commission is calling for providers to have minimum download speeds of 4 megabits per second. That's fast enough to stream high-definition video. It's also already the standard in most urban areas.
But the commission determined that requiring 4 megabits per second in communities off the fiber network was unreasonable.
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