Providing reliable internet to Alaska's villages and its rural Indigenous population has long been a challenge, due to the remoteness and lack of infrastructure.
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| Anchorage Local 1547 member and Alaska Communications apprentice Dustin Griffith during telecom training in his hometown of Homer. Photo courtesy of Alaska Communications.
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| Anchorage Local 1547 member Kristin Barber delivers broadband services in Sterling, an underserved community. Photo courtesy of Alaska Communications.
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Now, Anchorage Local 1547 members are on the cutting edge of an effort that might finally fix the problem for good.
Members employed by several signatory contractors will begin work later this year on the Alaska Communications' FiberOptic project, which will provide reliable, high-speed internet to 21 communities along the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers.
That includes installing cable underneath rapidly moving waters that put most of the mightiest rivers in the continental U.S. to shame. The Yukon River, which stretches across the state into Canada, has a drainage area 25% larger than Texas.
"During spring breakup, ice chunks the size of a school bus can just get rolled around in that area," said Naomi Hewitt, a Local 1547 business representative who has worked in the area. "There's a lot of water."
On the northwest edge of Alaska above the Arctic Circle, Local 1547 is partnering with NANA — a corporation owned by the native Inupiat people — to provide a regional broadband area.
Only about 7,000 people live in the 683-square-mile area, which is primarily within the Northwest Arctic Borough in the northwest part of the state. Getting any kind of internet there has been a challenge. The project got a boost with a $65 million grant from the Commerce Department's tribal broadband connectivity program.
Work is expected to begin later this year. As with any other project, major obstacles exist. This is the Last Frontier, after all.
Hewitt said that Snowcats — an enclosed-cab vehicle the size of a large pickup truck designed to travel on snow — can only be used during the winter. Otherwise, the tundra beneath is not strong enough to support them without causing ecological damage.
Snowcats transport not just supplies but also modular facilities that serve as temporary homes for workers on a jobsite. "They're not going to be able to helicopter them home every night," Hewitt said. "They have to drag a facility for them to shower in. They're going to be driving down the tundra and saying: 'All right, we're parking here. Shut her down."
And workers must find a way to bore down into the Yukon River to run the fiber beneath it.
"It's been done in other places, but nothing like Alaska," said J.C. Casquejo, another business representative in telecommunications. "We have different geographical challenges. We have to worry about the ice and when it thaws out. We have to make sure the fiber is still intact when the ice breaks up."
Still, these are good-paying jobs for a well-trained workforce that can handle the sometimes brutal weather conditions. There's also a sense of pride among Local 1547 members. They are performing high-tech work that will aid much of the massive state, particularly the long underserved Native Alaska population.
Business Manager Doug Tansy said Local 1547's relationship with Alaska Communications has been strong since the company was sold to ATN International in 2021.
"We've gone from adversaries to walking side-by-side throughout our industry together," he said. "It's a wonderful gift."
The local has worked hard in recent years to improve relations with the Native Alaska population in all sectors, which likely helped it form a partnership for the NANA work, he said.
"It's exciting to be on the cutting edge of telecommunications here in Alaska," said Tansy, a member of the native population who grew up in interior Alaska. "These are very much underserved communities, and they're geographically very difficult to get to, as well as being extremely expensive on a per capita basis."
These communities have some of the lowest levels of access to medical care in the United States. Most villages do not have a full-time doctor. Getting to one by land is nearly impossible most of the year.
But with state-of-the-art internet access, residents will be able to better access telehealth appointments, which should improve health throughout the communities. The drain of young people looking for more opportunity in other parts of the state or even the continental U.S. might be slowed, helping to preserve the native Alaskan culture.
Tansy noted that Local 1547 already has trained six residents of these communities as drone operators and added them as members. That work will play a role not just in the broadband projects, but all electrical projects in the remote areas.
Local 1547 covers the entire state. It has a proud history in Alaska's construction industry and has large units in telecommunications, utility, manufacturing and tree trimming.
Staffers like Hewitt and Casquejo work closely with telecommunications partners to ensure that work is done safely. That's a central tenet of IBEW membership but understandably takes on an even higher level of concern for workers in remote locations facing weather challenges most other workers only dream about.
"What our telecommunications members are doing will bring change to our state's landscape," Tansy said. "I really think it's going to change the ambition of those communities when they have a chance to get an education and grow their knowledge."