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

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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.
Page 1: Good Afternoon, My name is Don Elle

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

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