- Details
- By Chez Oxendine
- Economic Development
Native Village of Port Lions
Port Lions, Alaska
Award Amount: $29,336,431
Project Summary: The Broadband Infrastructure Deployment project proposes to install fiber directly connecting 930 unserved Native American households, plus businesses and anchor institutions, with qualifying broadband of 1GBPS symmetrical.
Update: The Native Village of Port Lions will leverage a $29.3 million award to build out an undersea fiber connection from the mainland to Kodiak Island, where Port Lions resides. The measure will provide 1 gbps download and upload speeds for 930 unserved Native households across five communities, all told: Native Village of Port Lions; False Pass; Ouzinkie; Chignik Lagoon; and Chignik Lake.
The project also includes backbone shelters, as well as a partnership with Kodiak College to provide workforce development training and support for technical degrees and certifications, per a National Telecommunications and Information Agency project summary.
The network project could bring internet prices down from roughly $500 a month to $179 or lower - making the prospect a much more affordable venture for many Native families in these communities, said Port Lions Administrator Denise May.
“People have been very excited and fortunate to have this,” May said. “It took four days for somebody to peel me off the ceiling when we found out we got the award.”
The project sprouts from an existing push into the Aleutians region by GCI, where the company has leveraged a combination of private and public funding - $58 million total - toward building 800 miles of subsea fiber. The partnership with Port Lions allowed the company to secure the latest bit of funding under the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program in October.
GCI continues progress on the new fiber backbone, called the AU-Aleutians project. Currently, the company is building in King Cove and Sand Point, with Port Lions to come later. May estimates the project will come online in 2024.
“This will allow us to compete globally, have opportunities to educate our kids,” May said. “This is going to be an urban price in a very rural community. That’s crucial.”
