Global wireless communications.

• Author: Pohl, John
• Position: Communications systems in Alaska

In 1851 the American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorn, in reference to the growth of the telegraph, prophetically wrote:

"Is it a fact ... that by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time. Rather, the rough globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence!"

Imagine what Hawthorn might say today about the rise of wireless communication systems.

For thousands of years the farthest-reaching wireless communication across Alaska's landscape was a wolf's call. Now advances in computer, communications and satellite technology are rendering every location on the planet accessible to manmade signals. Alaska, and the world, is becoming a lot smaller.

It is also becoming potentially more intelligent, in the sense of information availability, in part due to wireless communications. A wireless system is one where information appliances like televisions, computers or telephones connect directly or indirectly to established networks by using radio links. The signals are received and processed (or received and passed on) by ground station or satellite, depending on the locality. Links can be either one-way or two-way, depending on the bandwidth of the link. Bandwidth is roughly the amount of information (or bits) that can be transmitted per second.

The so-called gold standard of bandwidth is 4 gigabytes, which is equivalent to the amount of information contained in a feature-length movie video, transmitted every second.

The Old and New

Initially, much of the country's information flowed as electric signals through the copper wires of the telephone companies. That is being replaced by signals consisting of pulsed light, flowing through the glass filaments in fiber optic cable. Fiber optics offer much greater bandwidth and faster information flow. In the last few years, Alaska's Railbelt, as well as the state capital in Southeast, were linked to each other and the Lower 48 via land-based and undersea fiber optic cable. However, while most of the state's population situated on the Railbelt has considerable bandwidth access via copper and fiber optics, geographically, the bulk of the state is reachable only by satellite signal.

Satellite systems are more common in the state than people might think, and bandwidth, made available via satellite, is increasing. Over the next five years, it is believed that rural Alaska will see increasing information availability with...