Internet's small pond.

• Author: Swagel, Will
• Position: Internet service provider Seapac.net

From an Internet Service Provider to a Cyber Cafe, Seapac.net has Wrangell covered.

For 12-year-old entrepreneur Ivan Fairbanks, Thursdays were busy this past summer. Thursday was cruise ship day in Wrangell (pop. 2,400) and Leo's expertise was running mochas and lattes between Jitterbugs espresso stand and Seapac.net, the local cyber cafe.

At Seapac.net, cruise ship passengers sat in ones and twos at all eight terminals, reading, reciting, typing and dictating e-mails. They stood a dozen deep in the 800-foot facility in a small building on Wrangell's main drag, Front Street.

But there's no food or drinks sold there-hence, the slot Ivan filled. They ordered their refreshments from the menu board at Seapac.net; Ivan faxed the order in, then zipped over to Jitterbugs and brought it back.

Seapac.net co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Lynn Lopez says her company set up the public-use terminals only because the cruise ships folks begged them to last year. Too often, Lopez and co-founder Kathy Ellis found themselves yielding their own terminals to some desperate tourist. Seapac.net is actually Wrangell's homegrown Internet Service Provider, which also offers a wide range of hardware, software and training services.

In fact, Seapac.net-the care-provides only 1 percent of the revenue for Seapac.net, the company.

"Anything for revenue," laughs Lopez. "This is Alaska; we do it all."

Small Town Service

Lopez was a telecommunications network design consultant charging $130 an hour when her husband, also in the telecommunications industry, took a job in Wrangell in 1994. The timing was good.

A lifelong Washington resident whose father was a commercial fisherman, Lopez felt increasingly discomfited by the growth in the Puget Sound area. After 27 years in telecommunications, she was ready for a big change.

"I was afraid I was going to go postal," she says.

In Wrangell, Lopez became involved with a government-funded experimental Internet program called Seak.net. That led to some local consulting work, which led to the partnership with Ellis in 1997.

Seapac.net now touches about 1,000 subscribers and other users in Wrangell, Thorne Bay (on Prince of Wales Island) and Metlakatla (on Annette Island). In the tiny Prince of Wales' hamlet of Coffman Cove, a woman maintains a small bank...