Alaskan Telephone Co-op to Connect Remote Village With Fiber, Wireless Middle Mile

In 1999, Yakutat (AK) became home to one of Alaska’s first surf shops. Now, two decades later, the coastal community of 600 people is looking at another first for the community — high-speed Internet access. Cordova Telecom Cooperative (CTC) will be expanding its broadband network to Yakutat from the co-op’s headquarters 220 miles away in Cordova (AK). Already, CTC offers wireline and mobile connectivity in and around Cordova. The new project, codenamed NICEY or New Internet Communications for Everyone in Yakutat, will bring high-quality Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Internet access to the village, which has a large Native Alaskan population. NICEY will be financed in large part by a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) ReConnect grant of nearly $19 million awarded to CTC in Dec. This money will help fund not only the deployment of the fiber network in Yakutat but also the construction of several remote wireless towers to connect the village to the broader Internet.