Telecommunications infrastructure: significant investments in vital Alaskan connections.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Building Alaska

Alaska telecommunications companies invest significantly in building infrastructure statewide to ensure that Alaskans can communicate--those connections are vital, allowing Alaskans to manage emergencies, healthcare, businesses, and community ties.

Verizon

Verizon entered the Alaska market in 2010 with a survey to determine how best to approach business in the state, which was followed by the company's initial build out in 2011 and 2012 with a data-only pre-launch in 2013. One year later Verizon completed their launch with eleven stores and ninety employees in Alaska. "Since then we've continued to grow," Verizon's VP Alaska Ian Yahya says.

In 2016 alone Verizon has spent $15 million in acquiring network assets and network growth in Alaska, with plans to continue investing in the community. In 2015 Verizon has added two new stores and in 2016 converted their kiosk in the Dimond Mall into a flagship store, a renovation that cost more than $1 million, according to Yahya.

In total, since Verizon's entry in 2010, the company has invested $135 million instate. One of their significant investments was their switch building, which took approximately a year and a half to construct. The $35 million Anchorage switch was completed in November 2012.

Verizon touts their reliability--Yahya says that in terms of reliability, the switch has two generators in place in case commercial power were to fail, each of which carries half the load of the building, though either is capable of doing so on its own. "We run multiple fiber runs to much of our equipment, so if there's an incident we have redundancy built in, many times coming in from different physical locations," he adds. Additionally, all of Verizon's switch building have "sister switch" locations, so in the event that the building in Alaska were to fail entirely (despite the two generators that can run seven to ten days on approximately 7,200 gallons of fuel stored on sight and a bank of batteries which can run the switch for up to eighteen hours themselves) a Lower 48-based switch could continue to operate Verizon's Alaska network.

"We built this facility with the highest security specs, and we do the same with our cell sites," Yahya says. Verizon currently utilizes approximately 175 cell sites in Alaska. Senior Operations Manager Alaska Kyle Gruis says that of those 175 sites, 126 are owned and operated by Verizon and "about 50 more are owned and managed by partners of ours." Yahya says that 98...