Internet service providers (ISPs) in Nome and Northwest communities have a new satellite-based backhaul option thanks to a recently installed Pacific Dataport ground station. The Anchorage-based company calls Nome Gateway the largest-capacity commercial satellite service installed anywhere on Earth.
“The Nome Gateway is purpose-built to provide enterprise ISPs with a dependable backup network, ensuring their customers stay online no matter the circumstances. This is about strengthening Alaska’s connectivity infrastructure,” says Pacific Dataport CEO Chuck Schumann.
The Nome Gateway enables the Aurora LEO service, a new low-earth orbit (LEO) backhaul service designed exclusively for enterprise clients. However, Shawn Williams, Pacific Dataport’s vice president of government affairs and strategy, notes that the company partners with multiple satellite providers. Nome Gateway connects with Starlink satellites, but Williams says the company also has relationships with other LEO networks, such as Eutelsat OneWeb.
On the ground, the device array that forms the Nome Gateway involves multiple domes with satellite dishes inside them, which “all work as one unit.” Williams says the equipment is fairly low maintenance and can be monitored remotely. “We know literally everything that’s going on at that location.” As for the near-arctic cold in Nome, he adds, “This equipment is pretty ruggedized and can really handle the weather quite well.”
Indeed, Williams says the mid-winter climate when Pacific Dataport began installation had almost no effect on the deployment. From the decision to set up Nome Gateway to when the Aurora LEO service went online, it took Pacific Dataport about two months.
Pacific Dataport focuses on satellite-based broadband internet, especially in rural Alaska. The company sells to wholesale customers rather than direct to consumers.
Williams says Pacific Dataport had already planned to offer something along the lines of Aurora LEO, but the latest outage of fiber-based internet shortened the timeline. “We saw a need and we saw the opportunity, and we jumped on it,” he says.
Another Anchorage-based telecommunications company, Quintillion, completed Nome’s undersea fiber optic cable in late 2017. Since then, Arctic internet options have changed rapidly. One of the most visible changes occurred when Starlink started offering direct-to-consumer satellite internet in late 2022. Meanwhile, Quintillion continues to build out its subsea fiber-optic cables, with connections to Washington state and Japan in the works and a longer-term plan to build connections to Canada and Europe.
Both Quintillion and Pacific Dataport work as wholesalers, selling to other businesses and ISPs, so expanded or all-new services don’t change individual consumers’ choices of internet. But Williams says the more hidden benefit is just as important: reliability.
“We help them keep their customers connected,” Williams explains. “It makes their network more resilient, in case anything goes wrong.”
One such event, the mid-January cut to the underwater fiber optic cable that provides much of the Nome area’s internet, helped spur the ground station’s installation. Once Pacific Dataport got its equipment up and running, the Anchorage-based company could launch the Aurora LEO service. (Not to be confused with the Aurora IV high-throughput satellite, which orbits much higher, in geostationary Earth orbit.)
Lower 48 communities usually have lots of fiber optic cables. If one breaks, internet service providers can easily switch to another cable without customers noticing a difference. Alaska’s current network is much more fragile.
“Usually for Alaska, there’s only one option, and that’s the fiber coming into town and leaving the town,” Williams says. “That’s why something like this is really important, because when a fiber breaks, people lose their internet for weeks or months.”
In a recent Anchorage Daily News opinion piece, the Iñupiat Community of the Arctic Slope’s executive director, Morrie Lemen, highlighted why stable internet connections matter. “Access to high-speed Internet and reliable telecommunications is essential and can sometimes mean the difference between life and death, especially in the harsh Arctic environment,” he wrote.
Internet access in that region also affects national security. After an earlier cut to Quintillion’s fiber-optic cable in 2023, retired Major General Howard “Dallas” Thompson addressed the issue in an op-ed on the military news website C4ISRNET. “While improving resiliency and redundancy in telecom infrastructure is certainly a priority for Alaskans, it is also a national security imperative for our entire country,” he wrote.
Thompson frames varied internet sources as complementary, not competitive. The general wrote, “Government at no level should preemptively pick winners and losers. Terrestrial, submarine, and space-based telecom systems should all be included in the mix.”
Source: https://www.akbizmag.com/featured/pacific-dataport-brings-satellite-internet-to-nome/
