Good Afternoon, My name is Don Eller. I was born and raised in ...

Good Afternoon,
My name is Don Eller. I was born and raised in Tanana Alaska on the banks of the Yukon River, or at
least that is what I tell people. I was actually born in Fairbanks and 22 hours later I was flown to Tanana
where I lived to the age of 16, at which time my parents moved to Palmer. My parents moved primarily
to further my education; since I had taken all the classes the school in Tanana had to offer. Every
summer, throughout high school and college at the University of Colorado Boulder, I returned to one of
the communities we served and did telephone construction. Telephone work came easy to me, not
because I am smart or talented, but because doing the work was just part of my life. I was never taught
or mentored in the trade; it is just what we did. My earliest memory of doing telephone work was
sometime between the ages of 5 and 10 when my father had me run inside telephone wire under teacher
housing. The housing was actually trailers which were low to the ground with lots of obstacles
underneath. Crawling under the trailers would be a challenge for me today as much as it was for my
father at the time, but it was great entertainment for a young child and so began my telecommunications
career. I have had the good fortune to travel the world extensively having worked overseas in rural
development and been to over 70 countries. Just wanted to give you a little back ground on myself to
help you understand my perspective on rural Alaska telecom
We were asked to speak on the past and future challenges of telecom in Alaska from a small company
perspective. This is the first time I have given a speech on telecom in a long time and the first time I
have ever given a talk on telecom with no peer review, boy are you all in trouble. I have been taught that
the one thing you are supposed to do when giving a presentation is to know your audience; so I would
like to see a show of hands of all those who have been to a village. I’m sorry, but if the population is
above 500 that’s not a village in Alaska, that’s a big town. Now, could I see a show of hands of people
who have actually lived in an Alaskan village for at least a year? The reason I ask is because much like
being a tourist in a foreign country for two weeks, you can say you have been there but your perception of
the way it is and the way it actually is, are far apart. If you have not had the opportunity to spend time in
an Alaska Village, please take the time, it is well worth the effort. One of the best things about
Anchorage is that you are only about an hour away from Alaska, take advantage of it.
I just returned from Tanana yesterday where I was doing fiber splicing. To my knowledge, Tanana will
be the first community in Alaska to be served with fiber to the home. As I was sitting there splicing and
swatting mosquitoes trying to keep the bugs out of the fiber fusing chamber, I had a lot of time to think
about the future challenges of telecom in rural Alaska. I have narrowed it down to two areas which I
believe are the greatest future challenge for telecom in rural Alaska. The first really has nothing to do
with telecom specifically but is critical for rural Alaska; I will call it Social Political Challenges. The second
challenge is very easy when compared to the first; rural Alaska must replace the current third world
satellite middle mile with terrestrial middle mile.
Social Political Challenges are the local, state and national conditions which negatively impact the long
term viability of communities in rural Alaska. One would think that in a small community of under 500
residents where everyone knows everyone, is probably related, and sees them on a daily basis that they
could get along and work together for benefit of the community. That is typically not the case. God
made the country, man made the cities, and the devil made small towns. While I disagree with the
expression, I believe the reason it came in to being is that conflict is magnified in a small community.
When Councilman Joe's little Johnny has a fight with Councilwoman Ann's little Sally, it puts the council
members at odds even on city business. Joe also works for the local native corporation, the corporation
is trying to do something productive for the community but needs the approval from the local tribal office
where Sally works, so that’s not happening and the snowball keeps growing. However, it could be that
the local community leaders are just emulating the leadership at the state and national level in their
logical, level headed and cooperative approach to resolving and implementing solutions to issues in much
larger forums. If this is the case, they deserve an A for effort. How do you get people to work together
for their own benefit? If the communities can’t, we will see the continued decline of rural Alaska and
without customers there is no need to provide infrastructure.

The state and national Social Political Challenges will be grouped together since they are similar in
nature. There is a disconnect between many public servants, both civil and elected officials, and the
reality of the public, which they are supposed to serve. In order to provide phone service, stable reliable
electricity is required. In the early days of Yukon Telephone, my father found that he was spending more
time keeping the community generator going than working to provide phone service. He concluded that
if he was going to be doing the work he might as well be paid for it, so we ended up purchasing the local
electric utility in Tanana as well. Currently, in order to lower the cost electricity we have been looking into
alternative methods for generation. We were directed by the state agency, which controls the purse
strings for funding, that if we wanted any assistance we needed to pursue wind. The states directive was
based on results from a computer model which was in direct conflict with the two wind studies and 50
years of data from the Tanana Airport proving that commercial wind development is not economically
viable in the interior of Alaska. I was able to find though a hydro electric study done on a stream in
Tanana, by the predecessor to the current agency. The stream had year round flow, ideal geography
and soil conditions, making it great for a hydro electric site. When provided with the information from the
study, the agency totally discounted all the research and said, "traditional hydro electric development that
far north is unfeasible." The same state agency however, insists on pursuing the Susitna Hydro project
in spite of the fact that every economic study I have seen except the agencies, indicates it’s a bad idea.
My response to the state agency was this, "So the state is not willing to risk 5 million dollars proving that
hydro electric power is a viable alternative in an environment where electricity costs over $0.50 kwh and
there are no other known alternatives at this time, but it is willing to risk 5 billion dollars for a project under
similar conditions to Tanana where electricity cost $0.15 kwh with numerous other economical
alternatives."
As you can see, I really know how to win friends. I think it is genetic because in one of the best lines
ever spoken at the APUC, the precursor to the RCA, was blurted out by my father in the middle of a rate
case. Dismayed and disgruntled at the costs involved with lawyers and expert witnesses for the rate
case, my father enthusiastically said," My customers cannot afford your due process", and I agree. Is it
necessary for a utility with much less than a million dollars of revenue a year to go through a full blown
rate case that can easily cost over $100,000 for its 600 customers? It is an o.p.m. problem. That’s O P
M, other people’s money. I believe that the public servants would have a far more reasoned, rational and
researched approach if it was their money at stake. That said I am not here to bash our public servants.
The majority I work with are over worked, under paid, and doing a very good job.
I would be remiss in talking about rural issues if I did not mention the rural/urban conflict promoted by
some for political gain. Anchorage and Fairbanks are distribution hubs which benefit from rural Alaska.
Out of the 11 employees of our company, only 3 of them live in rural Alaska. Two of them are part-time
and all the rest live in the Mat Valley and greater Anchorage area. Out of the 2.1 million dollars spent on
a tank farm in Tanana less than $100,000 was spent in Tanana, all the rest was spent in Anchorage. We
are one state with rural and urban Alaska inter-dependant on each other.
Unfortunately, I do not have the answers to the social political challenges faced by me as a rural telecom
provider, us, as a state, or the nation as a whole. However, using sound economic and technical
analysis as is provided by ISER would be good place to start, if decision makers will listen.
I’m almost done, but not quite. It’s now time to talk about the easy stuff, the technical portion challenge.
In order for rural Alaska to fully participate in the broadband revolution, rural Alaska's current connection
to the rest of the world, the satellite, must be replaced with terrestrial networks. There are two reasons
why, cost and latency. A cheap satellite costs around $150 million dollars and the higher end versions
run about $450 million dollars. They have a life span of about 12 years, mainly because of the thruster
propellant needed to maintain a stable orbit, thus middle mile transport over satellite is expensive. A T-1
or 1.544 Mbps work of data over the satellite costs between $8000 and $12000 a month to rural AK. So
the ability to provide high speed internet to rural Alaska is not a technical issue but an economic one.
Villages simply cannot afford it.
Combine this with the physical limits involved in satellite transport and terrestrial middle mile transport
becomes a no brainer. Geosynchronous satellites orbit at 23,600 miles above the earth so even

traveling at the speed of light it takes real time for information to be transmitted. The information must go
from a village to the satellite, then from the satellite to downlink and then the same process in reverse to
send the reply, about a half of second. This may not seem like a long time to you, but just ask the
network gamers in rural communities who complain it’s not fair because they kill me before the game
even starts.
Combine the cost and latency issues and it becomes obvious that all of Alaska needs terrestrial middle
mile to replace the current satellite system. This is actually happening with GCI's fiber and terrestrial link
to Nome and our, Yukon Telephone's, terrestrial microwave system down the Yukon River. However
there are still a lot of little places out there that are hard to serve, but give us time and we'll get there. As
long as there is a dollar to be made and customers to be served there will always be nerds like myself to
figure out a way to make it happen.
Thanks for your time and attention, I hope you enjoyed it.