TV Technology: New Choices for Alaska.

• Author: JANSEN, GENE

Anchorage broadcasters must begin conversion from analog to digital transmission by May 1, 2002.

Sixty years ago, a single telecommunications wire laid over the Alaska landscape may have been an adventurer's only connection to life beyond a rugged and forbidding land. Pioneer Alaskans' appetite for information and word from the Outside world became a highly sought-after ingredient in the daily lives of settlers who often went months without hearing about the nation's current affairs.

Alaskans who pursued better communication methods in the early 1900s found themselves locked outside the shell of traditional 20th Century communications technology. They soon realized that the Lower 48 communication methods they left behind just wouldn't work in their new, northern environment. So they had to improvise, charting new communications territory.

Pioneer broadcaster Augie Hebert came to Alaska in 1939. His first impression of Alaska communications was a memorable one.

"I first came up on the Alaska Steamship Baranoff ... then traveled from Valdez to Fairbanks by bus," Hebert said. "When we stopped at the Black Rapids Lodge, I noticed two (telephone) tripods. One with two lines coming in, the other with one line going out."

Hebert left the stable, chief engineering position he held at an Oregon radio station for the challenge of starting a new station in Fairbanks. It was on that stopover where he realized Alaska's communication shortcomings. Equally, he came to respect the improvisational nature of Alaska's people.

Connecting (or coupling) the phones at the lodge would have allowed people at the Valdez and Fairbanks telephoning points to talk to each other person-to-person without the need of a relay. In this case, since they didn't have an electronic relay, Valdez residents had to use a human relay to send telephone messages to folks in Fairbanks. And vice versa. "When I went in and sat down, I looked up on the wall to see two hand-crank phones on the wall," recalled Herbert. They were staffed by a human repeater--the lodge's owner--who talked to one person and then relayed the information to the other. "That meant people sitting there heard every phone conversation."

Since those early days, pioneer communicators have struggled to achieve a better transmission system that would bring the current information that rural residents craved. Alaska's varied topography, severe weather conditions and widespread population base brought about some unique...