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Akutan is set to be the next Aleutian community to get hooked up to fiber-optic broadband internet. The Alaska-based telecommunications company GCI said in a Wednesday statement they expect to finish laying cable around the island community by the end of the month.
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On Nov. 8, crews for the telecommunications company began working on the cable landing station that will connect Akutan to high-speed internet.
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Alaska-based internet provider GCI is entering the next phase of their subsea fiber optic cable project.
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The telecommunications company said their crews were finishing construction in King Cove and Sand Point, the two largest communities in the Aleutians East Borough.
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Unalaska now has the fastest cell service in rural Alaska. That’s according to telecommunications company GCI, which turned up the high speed service on the island Tuesday, making it the state’s first rural community with a 5G connection.
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The telecommunications company said in a statement that Sand Point, King Cove and Akutan are hooked up to their fiber optic cable, hailing it a “major milestone” in closing the digital divide between urban and rural communities.
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The Unalaska City Council will weigh the city’s internet service provider options at its meeting Tuesday night, after unanimously deciding to postpone the discussion earlier this month.
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Aleutians internet service provider OptimERA significantly lowered its prices for internet in Unalaska earlier this month. That’s following the arrival of high-speed broadband to the island last fall.
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Prosecutors alleged that between 2013 and 2020, GCI didn’t follow the rules on how to calculate prices, leading to the company getting more in subsidies than it was entitled to. The prosecutors also said GCI caused rural health care provider Eastern Aleutian Tribes Inc. to agree to inflated prices after a contract was competitively bid. That also led to GCI knowingly getting additional higher payments, in this case from 2015 to 2018, according to the Justice Department.
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The Unalaska City School District has signed a new internet contract.