ACS constructing new internet towers on the peninsula

By Delcenia Cosman • May 18, 2023 1:30 am
An Alaska Communications technician installs a customer premise device to a home in Sterling, Alaska. This device communicates with a nearby tower, serving the customer with a high-speed internet connection. Photo courtesy of Alaska Communications
An Alaska Communications technician installs a customer premise device to a home in Sterling, Alaska. This device communicates with a nearby tower, serving the customer with a high-speed internet connection. Photo courtesy of Alaska Communications

Alaska Communications is expanding their internet services across the Kenai Peninsula.

ACS employees based on the Kenai Peninsula are constructing three new FiWi, or fixed wireless, towers to provide high-speed broadband internet to more Alaskans, according to ACS corporate communications manager Heather Marron.

One tower is located between Anchor Point and Homer, one will be located on Funny River Road in Soldotna, and the third will be located in North Kenai, Marron wrote in an email to Homer News.

Additionally, ACS is upgrading equipment on an existing structure to provide high-speed broadband internet service to the community of Kachemak-Selo, Marron wrote.

Construction should be completed “no later than Dec. 31” of this year, according to Marron.

Reliable internet access is more often and more widely becoming a necessity, and the new tower construction is part of ACS’s work to address that need and “expand high-speed, affordable service to underserved areas [so] more Alaskans can readily access modern services like telemedicine, online education, and other economic and social activities,” Marron wrote.

The FiWi towers will broadcast fixed wireless internet to a customer’s home through a receiver installed on their property. The receiver must have line-of-sight to the tower in order for FiWi to work for the customer.

According to Marron, living close to a FiWi tower provides beneficial impacts through increased chances of receiving the highest internet connection speed.

“A quality wireless connection is highly dependent on having line-of-sight to the tower, so the closer you are and more clearly you can see a tower, the better,” she wrote.

With regard to the towers’ impact on community members’ health and safety, Marron noted that ACS’s fixed wireless technology complies with all Federal Communications Commission’s health and safety standards.

The tower construction project is being funded in part by FCC’s Connect America Fund Phase II program, which was designed to expand broadband access to areas where it is currently unavailable. ACS has been participating in the CAF II program since 2017, according to Marron, and their goal is to “provide service to 32,000 rural Alaskans under this program by the end of 2025.”

In addition to the tower build under the CAF II program, ACS is expanding services on the Kenai Peninsula outside CAF II this year by “upgrading radios on non-CAF towers to provide enhanced services” and “upgrading [their] DSL network to bring residents’ speeds up to 75 megabits per second,” Marron wrote.

For more information on the CAF II program, visit https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/connect-america-fund-phase-ii-faqs. For more information on Alaska Communications and their services, visit https://www.alaskacommunications.com/Residential.