The cost and availability depends quite a bit where you are in Alaska. The cost also depends quite a bit on what level of service quality you are looking for and whether or not you want simple Internet access or want some kind of business class Internet service with hosting capabilities.
If you are in Anchorage, Juneau, Fairbanks, Wasilla, Kodiak, Seward, Homer, Kenai, Soldotna, Eagle River, Kotzebue or Nome, your best bang for the buck is going to be from GCI, ACS and sometimes AT&T. Satellite will be more expensive, a lot less bandwidth and a lot less reliable. If you are in bush Alaska, your choices are going to mostly be GCI and sometimes ACS. Both of which will be backhauling over satellite on big dishes, pointing low to the horizon. GCI does last-mile WISP in a majority of bush Alaska communities and you will be unable to come anywhere close to their prices because they are using USF funding to get Internet to the bush schools and health clinics and QOS traffic shaping to sell the unused Internet bandwidth to the community populations over their WISP networks. FWIW, GCI is the bandwidth king in Alaska and quite often you will find that ACS and AT&T are secretly buying circuits from GCI and riding GCI's network and passing the markup to the customer. GCI are greedy bastards and will sell anything to anyone... ...as long as the two of you can agree on a price. And keep in mind that they get really frantic if they think that their competition (ACS, AT&T) might take a sale away from them. Their unofficial motto is "we never say 'no' to anyone. We just negotiate price." ACS and AT&T are crippled by unions and have a tough time competing with GCI. Submitting "requests for quotation" to all three of the major carriers will usually get the most competitive price responses. Don't forget to require a service level agreement (SLA) to be included as part of the quotations. I hope this helps. -Christopher Erickson Telecom Engineer (formerly from Alaska) Waikoloa Village, HI 96738 N19°57' W155°47' > -----Original Message----- > From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org > [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Dan Ferguson > Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2010 12:41 PM > To: WISPA General List > Subject: [WISPA] Satellite Internet Providers > > Hello, > > I am looking for suggestions for shared satellite Internet providers > which can service Alaska. It's painfully expensive and we > are looking > for options to get more bandwidth. > > Thanks, > > - Dan > > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------- > ------------------ > WISPA Wants You! Join today! > http://signup.wispa.org/ > -------------------------------------------------------------- > ------------------ > > WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org > > Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
