by Greg Lincoln
Hello Friends. Here’s something interesting from the cyberworld for us folks living in rural Alaska. Pacific Dataport, Inc. is announcing it has received its Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Grant of Authority for their new gateway located in Eagle Mountain, Utah. This gateway will be used exclusively to connect thousands of rural Alaskans to affordable and fast broadband.
The Aurora Network will consist of one GEO HTS (high-throughput satellite) and one GEO VHTS (very high-throughput satellite). Both satellites will cover 100% of Alaska with approximately 80 Gbps of new capacity, allowing telecoms, governments, Tribal entities, health clinics, schools, libraries and entrepreneurs the ability to deliver broadband to their communities. Pacific Dataport’s new capacity will be available Summer 2021.
Shawn Fitzpatrick, Pacific Dataport’s Ground Systems Manager, comments: “The recent authorization from the FCC for our Eagle Mountain earth station is one more successful step in the realization of bringing affordable broadband to all of Alaska.”
The Aurora Network’s new technology will bring Alaska into the 21st century and connect the approximately 40% of Alaskans who are either unserved (no internet) or underserved (slow and expensive internet). Pacific Dataport is proud to make this giant leap in broadband technology possible for Alaska.
We tried an internet speed test on one of our phones on 3G data and the results came back as: 0.21 mbps for downloads and .25 mbps for uploads, which is very slow. Mbps is megabits per second.
