Homer Alaska - Business

A $1 billion-plus fiber-optic cable project announced by two Alaska Native village corporations and a multinational firm stands to link Asia with Europe via Alaska, while bringing reliable high-speed Internet to dozens of rural Alaska villages.

The ArcticLink project, which involves laying 10,000 miles of undersea fiber-optic cable, is the answer to the fast-growing telecommunications demands created by the globalized economy, said Walt Ebell, chief executive officer of the Kodiak-Kenai Cable Co.

"Creating this international broadband expressway through the Arctic will allow unprecedented capacity, unmatched security and reliability, and a dramatic latency reduction," Ebell said, in a Jan. 13 presentation in Anchorage announcing the project. "Connecting these three continents directly is truly historic."

The undersea fiber optic ArcticLink would use a politically stable route that will run from Japan through the Arctic region to the United Kingdom.

About 100 people are already working on the project. Construction is to begin in 2011 and be completed by 2013, assuming that a sufficient number of customers and financing is lined up, officials said.

To develop ArcticLink, KKCC, owned by the Old Harbor Native Corp. and Ouzinkie Native Corp., have joined with KhaNNet, a member of the Khanjee family of companies to form the Arctic Cable Co. LLC.

Khanjee is the holding entity for investment and development projects of Khanjee USA LLC. Its subsidiaries and affiliates hold interests in various U.S. and multinational joint ventures ranging from major infrastructure projects and real estate to hospitality and trading. Incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in the Washington, D.C., area, Khanjee and its subsidiaries and affiliates have a presence in 25 countries.

ACC, in turn, will lead the international consortium to finance, design, engineer, build and operate the undersea project.

"We are very confident of it," said Ike Icard, a consultant for the project. "We are partnered with a very strong, very determined company, and we have identified a number of carriers who are very enthused about it, so we feel good about it."

The project would use four 40 gigabits per second subsea fiber pairs, providing four times the existing capacity per wavelength, for a combined system capacity of 6.4 terabits per second.

It would offer record-setting latencies — a measure of time delay — of less than 90 milliseconds, a nearly 50 percent reduction compared to existing preferred Asia-Europe latency times, and use a politically stable and secure route through Japan, the United States, Canada, Greenland and the United Kingdom.

ArcticLink also could interface with the proposed Northern Fiber Optic Link, or NFOL, an undersea fiber optic project to bring high-speed telecommunications and broadband service across Western Alaska. The NFOL, currently being developed by KKCC, would connect all of Southwest, Western and Northern Alaska with the existing Kodiak Kenai Fiber Link.

An application for federal stimulus funding is pending and, if approved, the NFOL would deliver high-speed, high-capacity, fiber optic-based broadband service to potentially dozens of communities in Western Alaska.

"The near-term economic benefits will be enormous, while the long-term capabilities enabled by the ArcticLink will immensely improve international communications," Ebell said.

Even if the federal stimulus money were rejected, the Asia-Europe project, with landing points at Dutch Harbor and Prudhoe Bay, would still move forward, consultants on the project said.

KKCC has been working closely with Tyco Electronics Subsea Communications LLC to include specially designed four-port branching unit interfaces as part of the NFOL system to monitor and support climate and marine research.

The inclusion of this new type of branching unit in the system design has been encouraged by representatives of the commercial fishing industry, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geologic Survey, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Arctic Research Commission, the Interagency Oceans Observing System, the Alaska Ocean Observing System, the University of Alaska and the Alaska Federation of Natives.

The Kodiak-Kenai Cable Co., formed in 2001 by the Old Harbor Native Corp., with Ouzinkie Native Corp. as a minority investor, is the owner and operator of the Kodiak-Kenai Fiber Link, a submarine fiber optic telecommunications system connecting Kodiak Island and the Kenai Peninsula with Anchorage.

Landing points are located at Anchorage, Kenai, Homer, Kodiak and the Alaska Aerospace Development Corp.'s launch complex in Narrow Cape and Seward.

The system minimizes exposure of the Turnagain Arm communication corridor to earthquakes, landslides or terrorist acts. It also connects schools, industry and commerce to the world with real-time broadband Internet.

The benefits of this cable system over existing transmission media include greater reliability, secure transmission, more capacity and high-speed access, free of delay problems. Improved telecommunication delivery enhances economic opportunities throughout Alaska.

Margaret Bauman is a reporter for the Alaska Journal of Commerce.