Enduring business: connecting Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.

• Author: Harrington, Susan
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Alaska & Pacific Northwest

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Alaska and the Pacific Northwest have enduring business connections. The two regions have enjoyed business connections for hundreds of years when taking into consideration early trade and travel among Alaska Natives and world explorers via land and sea. When accounting for air travel and telecommunications, the connections date to the early 1900s. Tele graph lines were laid underwater between Sitka and Seattle in 1903. Twenty years later there were commercial air flights.

These connections via air, land, sea, and telecommunications continue to prosper and grow even now. One need only look to Alaska Business Monthly's annual Power List and monthly directories and listings to see the hundreds of companies and thousands of workers sharing commerce between Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.

Transportation

Probably the most visible connections are in the transportation industry, as goods are shipped via air, land, and sea to Alaska from ports in the Pacific Northwest. In the give and take and ebb and flow of annual commerce, commodities such as crude oil and mined ores as well as other cargo like hazardous waste and materials to be recycled are shipped out of Alaska mostly to the Pacific Northwest.

Operations are based throughout both areas with many originating in Alaska. Seasonally the visitor industry adds to the transportation flow with air travelers, cruise passengers, and overland adventurers. State run operations as well as commercial enterprises are connected as well. One example is the Alaska Marine Highway System's presence in Bellingham, Washington.

Telecommunications

What is new and exciting, though, is a construction project underway that will offer wholesale telecommunications capacity on a network connecting the Arctic with the rest of the world. Quintillion's creation of this new Arctic network is initially reliant on connections to the Pacific Northwest via existing undersea fiber optic cable. Alaska's largest telecoms--GCI, AT&T, and Alaska Communications--all rely on undersea cables connecting Alaska to Washington state and...