The last time Sitka’s undersea fiber optic cable broke in 2017, the resulting outage lasted 12 days, but didn’t seem nearly as apocalyptic as the latest event.

We didn’t see stories about the social and psychological impact of the outage in 2016; business leaders didn’t put out a survey on its economic impact.

That’s because it wasn’t an outage in 2017 – it was a partial outage. The undersea fiber optic cable to Sitka was somewhat novel eight years ago, and the technological infrastructure it would replace was still in play. Everything worked, albeit a bit more slowly.

Not so when Sitka’s fiber optic link broke this time. At 11 a.m. on August 29, Sitkans found themselves without internet, without cell service, without texting, and unable to use credit cards. Even some landlines – depending on the type of phone – didn’t work.

 “It’s  a consequence of the fact that everything is sort of reliant on the internet these days,” said Joe Kane, director of Broadband and Spectrum Policy for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “Your wireless phone services. Those are getting signals from towers. But then the towers themselves are connected via wired backhaul into the backbone of the internet. Not just these undersea cables, like the one in Sitka, but also the ones that go all the way across the oceans, all around the world. And so any sort of weak link in that chain getting cut means that you lose sort of everything on the other side of it.”

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation is a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. It has a staff of about 40 people who, among other things, track the massive federal investment in delivering broadband to everyone in the country.

Kane suggests there are things we could learn from Sitka’s outage.

“Sitka experienced a microcosm of the overall vulnerabilities that we could see with undersea cables if there were more widespread outages,” he said. “So I do think it’s maybe highlighting the importance of securing them.”

Kane describes a tension between fiber optic cable and satellite technology. Fiber optic can be significantly faster than satellites, but that’s changing. An earlier generation of communications satellites were in high Earth orbit, had limited bandwidth, and were slower. Now, Starlink has put thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit, and as Sitkans quickly discovered, the speed difference was noticeable, but by no means a deal-breaker.

Kane believes that the best policy is to maintain both systems.

“There are satellite options now, and there are alternative cable options so that you don’t end up with only one point of failure,” said Kane. “But I do think that’s something where we should be looking:  towards more resiliency and maybe more redundancy. A lot of times people talk about fiber as being future proof, but I think maybe we’re learning that it’s not Alaska proof.”

GCI is heavily invested in undersea cable, and is well toward completion of an 800 mile cable linking the communities of the Aleutian chain. In a response to an email from KCAW, GCI corporate communications manager Josh Edge writes, “Like all telecommunications networks, fiber is subject to outages, but it has long since proven itself as the most reliable middle-mile network technology available.” Edge says fiber optic has been the backbone of GCI’s network for 25 years, adding “fiber is unique in its ability to deliver orders of magnitude more capacity as technology and customer needs evolve.”  

The United States is spending $42 billion on universal broadband for its citizens, with much likely to be dedicated to terrestrial infrastructure like fiber optic cable – even though GCI relied on a combination of microwave and satellite technology to maintain a minimal level of service while the cable was repaired. Joe Kane has no argument with universal broadband as policy, but as a practical matter, Sitka’s experience demonstrates that fiber optic cable doesn’t make sense everywhere. 

“I did a back of the envelope calculation the other day,” said Kane. “If you took all the federal money that had been spent on trying to build broadband to Alaska, you could buy every household in the state a Starlink terminal and give them free service on it for multiple years.”

Joe Kane is the director of Broadband and Spectrum Policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington D.C.

Technicians used a device like this to splice the severed fiber optic cable between Angoon and Sitka in February, 2016. That repair took six days, and required lifting the cable from the sea floor.  (GCI photo/Bruce Rein)

Telecommunication services to Sitka and Angoon were disrupted early Thursday morning (7-13-17) when the fiber optic cable serving those communities was damaged.

Heather Handyside, director of corporate communications for GCI, says the break in the cable was detected at around 7 a.m. somewhere on Douglas Island near Juneau.

Although some service in Douglas was affected, Sitka and Angoon took the big hit, and were both without internet or cell phone service while GCI rerouted traffic to backup satellite and terrestrial networks.

Handyside says that the backup systems are carrying most traffic now – just a bit slower.

“People will see a resumption of their services – especially wireless and internet – but it may not be as fast as they are used to.”

Cable television was also affected, with GCI customers losing just some channels, or in some cases, losing television altogether. 360 North, Juneau’s public television service, was impaired. Handyside says that repair efforts right now are focused on restoring internet and cell phone.

Cell phone customers of Verizon and AT&T also lost service during the outage. Handyside says there is a complicated agreement that allows other providers to use the GCI fiber optic cable.

“In general, carriers will use the same networks, or the same fibers. So often if there’s a cut to fiber that one company owns, it may affect other carriers who use that fiber.”

Handyside says that GCI plans to restore its own traffic – and that of other providers – to the fiber optic cable at the same time.

The last time the cable broke in February 2016 the damage occurred on the sea floor, and required a special ship from Seattle and six days to raise and splice the cable. Handyside says that this break is on land, and should be repaired by GCI technicians within 24 hours.

Handyside says that, despite the challenges, GCI remains committed to providing fiber optic services to Southeast Alaska.

“People have an appetite for it. There’s lots more great content out there. The more we build, the more people need.”

And when it fails on occasion, people will need more cash. Credit card machines were unavailable during the outage, but most commerce carried on nevertheless in downtown Sitka, using actual money.

ACS leases capacity from GCI’s fiber optic cable, affecting customers this week while the cable undergoes repairs. (Photo credit Andrew McPherson)

Sitka and Angoon’s internet blackout continues this week. As the fiber optic cable serving both island communities is pulled from the sea floor for repairs, it’s not only GCI customers who have been affected.

Downloadable audio.

With telecommunications traffic shifted to alternate routes, Sitka customers with Alaska Communications Systems, or ACS, have also experienced a molasses-like quality to their internet. That’s because ACS leases capacity from GCI’s fiber optic cable. 

Heather Cavanaugh is the Director of Corporate Communications at ACS. “We apologize for the inconvenience. We know it’s frustrating to be without Internet and we want to make it right for our customers by proactively giving everyone a credit.”

Cavanaugh said every customer will receive a letter and be automatically credited for the loss of service. “So [customers] do not have to contact us. We will give every Sitka home or business customer that’s impacted by the outage credit on their bill,” Cavanaugh said.

David Morris, GCI’s Vice President, compares the resulting slowness to funneling all of Sitka and Angoon’s traffic from an eight lane highway to a one lane highway. “All this stuff travels at the speed of light, so it’s not technically slower. It’s that just the amount of available bandwidth is greatly constrained,” Morris said. “If you’ve got a whole bunch of users trying to access that one lane highway, it’s going to naturally appear slower.

Most of the traffic has been moved to satellite systems 22,000 miles over the equator. So, a simple call from Sitka to Juneau must travel farther, much farther than it would down the fiber optic highway.

Morris explained that the increase in latency – basically how long it takes data to send – doesn’t jive with newer devices. “A lot of devices now are optimized for fiber and so they’ll timeout and you’ll have inconsistent results as a result of latency,” he said.

GCI crews aim to finish repairs and restore full service to TV, phone, and internet on Saturday (02-20-16).

Emma Kelly says it’s not a moment too soon. The Sitkan takes online classes through Johnson & Wales University and hasn’t been able to take them at all this week. She has no cell service, so called KCAW from Facebook messenger.

“It’s been pretty annoying actually,” Kelly said. “My school goes by trimesters. So, this is my last week of classes before I’m supposed to take a final next week. I have a fourteen page paper I gotta finish writing before the end of next week.”

To compensate, Kelly has been using the internet at the local library and at University of Alaska Southeast. She’s from Rhode Island originally. “So this was a pretty big move and I’m not used to Internet shutting down for multiple days at a time. I was looking at plane tickets to go somewhere else for Internet,” Kelly said.

In the meantime Sitkans who are not looking at airfare, are going to be stuck down here on a one-lane information highway with the rest of us for a few more days. 

GCI sent a repair ship, the Wave Venture, to Northern Chatham Strait to repair a damaged fiber optic cable, serving Sitk and Angoon. (Photo by Jorgen Eliason)

Missed connections were hard to avoid this Valentine’s Day (02-14-16) in Sitka and Angoon. The fiber optic cable serving both island communities is damaged, leaving customers with spotty to zero Internet, TV, and phone service.

Downloadable audio.

Installed in 2008, the cable runs 1,400 feet below the ocean’s surface. Picture a bundle of glass strands, thinner than a human hair, encased in plastic. And surrounding that is an armor of steel, made of 12-gauge strands.

“So all of that is about an inch and a half in diameter and it’s extremely heavy,” said David Morris, GCI’s Vice President.

GCI sent a repair ship from Victoria, British Columbia – the Wave Venture – to Chatham Straits to retrieve the cable and repair it. Cable crews are actively working to replace the damage, but have discovered more sections in need of repair.

Morris said, “There does appear to be another section of the cable that is compromised . It’s in Peril Strait, so once [crews] finish the repair in Chatham Strait they’ll move over to the second location and repair that.”

With the repair work underway, GCI has moved its customers to alternate systems, severely reducing Internet, cable TV, and phone service. GCI gave customers only a few days notice that this would happen, but Morris said the company couldn’t wait any longer to begin the repair work. “We’ve got no control of when the cable would completely degrade down to zero. So we made the decision that we needed to repair it as soon as possible before it completely catastrophically failed, giving no one any warning at all.”

As for the cause of the damage, a GCI press release blamed unusually strong currents and rugged terrain. But Morris says it’s too early to know what exactly is the culprit.

Meanwhile, landlubbers are waiting in suspense and staring at their loading bars. Simple text messages, local, and long distance calls still work. But the pace of web browsing is somewhere between dial-up and banana slug. So, forget about watching that Lady Gaga performance at the Grammy’s, texting pictures of your kids, or signing in to your online class. It’s not gonna happen.

Josh Houston was at an event with his friend Jasmine this weekend. He told KCAW, “People were saying, ‘Oh man, no Internet at home. We’ve been living like it’s the 1940s. We can’t even watch TV.’ And under my breath, I said to Jasmine, ‘Well I was at home laying tracks on Garage Band on my iPad, so it didn’t feel like the 1940s to me.’”

And the anachronism is true. All the hardware and software works, but anything sent across time and space – in the cloud or streamed- just isn’t working.

Sitkans who run small, or independent business, are particularly frustrated. “The lack of Internet has deeply affected my life,” said Emmett Williams, an independent filmmaker. He parked himself in a local coffee shop because his internet at home isn’t working at all.

Williams said that many of his clients are out of state. “Luckily, people find is cute and quirky that I live on this island in Alaska. So they’re like, ‘Oh this is so cute, no worries!’ So it’s fine, but only because there are no deadlines,” Williams said. “If I had a deadline, I would have to go to Juneau and stay there for a few days because I’m so dependent on the internet for my work.”

Williams also missed the latest episode of The Walking Dead, so if any of you Sitkans DVR’d it, please let him know what happened.

Williams: Even when I listen to KCAW, I do it online. And so, I’m going to buy a radio.
KCAW: Victory for terrestrial radio!

One other kicker to this whole situation? William’s isn’t even a GCI customer. He’s an ACS customer. But like many non GCI-customers in Sitka and Angoon, his service has also crawled to a slow. GCI says this is because of routing and roaming agreements between carriers.

Fellow Sitkan Beth McDonald said the loss of service, while initially frustrating, had one unexpected outcome. “Instead, I picked up a book and started reading it and I read seven chapters yesterday. I can’t pull myself away from the book too long and it’s not such a bad thing.”

GCI estimates the repair will be complete this Saturday (02-20-16) and that full service to phone, TV, and Internet will be restored at that time.

Local hospital operations and public safety agencies are being served through a dedicated bypass system.

Once the repairs are made, Morris said customers won’t be charged for loss of service and will be notified of the credit process. And in the meantime, those in Sitka and Angoon have little choice but to look less at their screens.

Sitka and Angoon customers can check for the latest updates on the GCI Facebook page. In addition, Sitka customers may call 907-747-3535 for local updates.