Damaged undersea cable degrades Western Alaska internet service
Quintillion contractors laid some 1,200 miles of fiber-optic cable off Alaska’s northern and northwestern coasts in the summer of 2017 to connect to an overland fiber cable that the company extended from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay. (Quintillion graphic)
Repairs to a fiber-optic data cable supplying nearly all Western Alaska are underway, after an undersea cut likely caused by ice.
Quintillion’s president, Mike McHale, said a full restoration of internet and some cellphone service could take up to two months.
“This will be a long-term outage,” he said. “We’re talking about probably a six- to eight-week turnaround time for the ship to mobilize and for the ice to clear out of the region, but that is the current situation.”
According to a statement Monday from Quintillion, service on the subsea fiber optic network was interrupted over the weekend after a fiber cut caused a system-wide outage. Initial assessments indicate an offshore cut north of Oliktok Point, near Prudhoe Bay.
“It’s a high probability that the cut was a result of (a) significant ice scouring event,” McHale said.
The broken line is 34 miles offshore at a depth of about 90 feet. A pair of ships are being mobilized to aid in the repair.
“We have repair ships mobilized and en route to the location,” McHale said. “Right now we’re doing extensive diagnostics to make sure we understand, have an idea exactly what the problem is.”
According to Quintillion GCI’s hybrid microwave/fiber network, which operates on a ring system for redundancy, is still operational.
Source: Alaska Public Media News
