ANCHORAGE, Ala. – Almost 2,000 tons of specially-built subsea fiber has begun the journey from Europe to Alaska and its eventual home on the ocean floor along the Aleutian Chain. The fiber, the foundation of GCI's 800-mile Aleutian Fiber project, will close the digital divide and bring transformative 2 gigabit residential internet speeds to some of the most remote communities in the nation, including Unalaska, known to many reality-television fans as home to the popular show "Deadliest Catch."

The construction and delivery of the specialized fiber is a major project milestone amid production and supply-chain issues that have impacted the global economy in recent years.

Because there are so few companies that can build the hundreds of miles of armored, subsea fiber needed for its AU-Aleutians Fiber Project, GCI had to go all the way to Europe to find the right supplier. The production process began in fall 2021, after route surveys and analysis were complete, at NSW Cable facilities in Nordenham, Germany. While the cable production itself only took a couple months, it took considerably longer to gather the necessary materials.

Crews carefully coiled more than 800 miles of subsea fiber into two tanks that were built on the M/V Vertom Thea in Germany.

Non-repeatered fiber spans use higher-powered optical amplifiers at each end to transmit the signal, rather than a system of lower powered amplifiers placed at regular intervals along the fiber's length. This approach reduces the hands-on work required to maintain and upgrade the fiber and limits the risk of equipment failure, both of which are especially important in the remote areas served by the AU-Aleutians Fiber Project.

Once the fiber was built, GCI then tackled the challenge of transporting it from Nordenham, located at the mouth of the Weser River on the coast of the North Sea, more than 12,000 miles to the remote Aleutian community of Unalaska.

The fiber is currently aboard the 330-foot-long M/V Vertom Thea, as it makes its way through the English Channel, across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Panama Canal, and up the Pacific coast to British Columbia where it will be loaded onto two cable installation vessels and complete its journey across the Gulf of Alaska to Unalaska.

The AU-Aleutians Fiber Project will run approximately 800 miles from Kodiak along the south side of the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutians to Unalaska. The project is scheduled to deliver urban-level speed, service and reliability for the first time to the communities of Unalaska and Akutan by the end of 2022, Sand Point and King Cove by the end of 2023, and Chignik Bay and Larsen Bay in late 2024.

The project is expected to cost $58 million. GCI was awarded a $25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's ReConnect program in support of the project. The company will invest $33 million of its own capital to pay for project costs not covered by the ReConnect grant. More information about the project can be found at www.gci.com/aleutians.

Read the full announcement here.

GCI