2023 Gustavus Internet Update
Nathan Borson
In this report:
- A Decade Ago
- Now
- Fibre Alaska
- Starlink
- Other options
- Comparison
- Affordability
- A Decade From Now
- Conclusion
A Decade Ago
- Eleven years ago next month, the Gustavus City Council adopted the 2012 Gustavus Broadband Plan. I was the plan's project manager and administrator of the city's Gustavus Community Network (GCN). At that time, local residents had no Internet access that qualified as broadband (then defined as 4 Mbit/s down). For residents away from the airport and without a clear view of the Starband satellite, the only option for Internet access at home was GCN's dial-up service. But by then many dial-up users had already cancelled because it was too frustrating to wait for images and video to load in web pages designed for faster connections. GCN built a wireless network that served certain treeless areas (the Salmon River meadow), but only managed to prove that approach would not work at all for most Gustavus residents, and was barely adequate even then for those who could get it. I realized that within 10 years we would need a network as skookum as the newly completed Gustavus dock.
- The city's plan called for a $2.4M "last-mile" (within Gustavus) wired network to be owned and operated by GCN. It recognized that better "backhaul" (the "middle mile" connection between Gustavus and the rest of the world) was also necessary to deliver fast and affordable Internet service over the proposed network, but deferred that to a regional or statewide effort (the first Alaska Broadband Taskforce was meeting at the time).
- The city was unable to find the public funding necessary to carry out their plan. They dissolved the Gustavus Community Network in 2016. By then people had better options. They still fell far short of the 100 Mbit/s service the city envisioned, but upgraded cellular data was decent for those close to the towers, HughesNet offered up to 25 Mbit/sec download speeds for those with the required view of their satellite, and Gustavus-grown innovator David Kunat's Fibre Alaska was using road corridors to punch high-speed wireless links through the forest.
- After David's tragic 2017 aviation death, his parents Janusz and Ela took over Fibre Alaska. "We continue to pursue a wild idea of a hard-working kid that dared to dream big," they write on their website. They began burying fiber optic cable in Gustavus, and were awarded a $1.3M USDA Community Connect broadband grant late in 2021. The grant was too small to connect every home and business in Gustavus as the city had planned, but Janusz tells me he could not afford the required 15% cash match for a city-wide project. But unlike the city's plan, Fibre Alaska's grant included construction of a middle-mile microwave link to Juneau, where upstream Internet access is much more available and affordable (Fibre Alaska was paying AT&T's premium prices for dedicated Internet access in Gustavus). Fibre Alaska began grant-funded construction last Summer and is wrapping up that project now, with customers already enjoying the higher speeds made possible by the new backhaul.
Now
Fibre Alaska News
- A handful of community members turned up at the Gustavus Community Center on a sunny Sunday afternoon August 27 to see and hear the latest Gustavus Internet news in pictures and stories from Fibre Alaska owners Janusz and Ela Kunat, and to enjoy the pizza, coffee, and cookies they provided. I followed up with personal conversations, emails, and a visit to their home to test Fibre Alaska's various offerings. I am a Fibre Alaska customer, but have no other affiliation with the company.
- Fiber-optic service to customer premises
- Most of Gustavus is wired with fiber optic cable that was laid by Fibre Alaska using their own efforts and funds before and shortly after they were awarded a Community Connect grant in late 2021.
- Customers in the grant-funded Proposed Funded Service Area (PFSA), who signed up for free installation, are now connected to Fibre Alaska's' Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON), which is capable of delivering 2,500 Mbit/s down to customers from their network center in Gustavus. With an equipment upgrade, they could deliver 10,000 Mbit/s (10 gigabits) down over the same installed cables.
- There may be a few additional customer hookups in the PFSA, and there is still some work to finalize and clean up a few temporary hookups.
- The grant-funded PFSA covers only part of town. The PFSA boundaries that Fibre Alaska's consultants drew up for the grant application have proven problematic, dividing neighbors who get grant-funded installation from those who do not. In some cases, part of a customer's property -- or house, even -- is within the PFSA and part is not, and USDA (the granting agency) has been very strict about observing the boundaries.
- For customers outside the FPSA, many were already hooked up to Fibre Alaska before the grant was awarded. Others have been connected without grant funding as opportunities presented themselves.
- Fibre Alaska has spare capacity now and is eager to serve new customers, whether or not they are in the PFSA. Trenching fiber to a customer's premises is laborious and expensive, so without grant funding there may be an installation fee (especially for those farther away from the existing network) and/or a multi-year subscription commitment, but Fibre Alaska needs as many customers as possible to share the costs of the local network and the Internet backhaul. They pledge to work with anyone who expresses willingness to connect. There may be additional public funding opportunities to fill in gaps outside the PFSA.
- Now that underground fiber is installed, Fibre Alaska's wireless equipment on telephone poles around town is unused, and will likely be gradually removed.
- As Gustavus Electric Company's Joe Vanderzanden warned the city during its planning, it proved very difficult to accomplish all the underground fiber installation while working around existing utilities. Janusz considers it a miracle that there was so little damage to buried electric and phone lines. There was a lot of hand-digging! The Salmon River Bridge crossing was much harder than one might expect!
- Jan and Ela learned a lot about federal grant administration, the hard way. For example, they were forced to stringently account separately for work and equipment done and used in the PFSA versus outside it.
- Gustavus is different. Most grants go to large, well-capitalized incumbent telecommunication companies and get contracted out, while Fibre Alaska is a tiny company and did all but the tower installation themselves. "We could never have accomplished what we did if we contracted it out," relates Janusz, partly because Jan and Ela worked for free, and partly because contracts generally cost more due to overhead, profit, and the cost of deploying equipment and personnel from out of town.
- Gigabit backhaul to Juneau
- Fibre Alaska's Community Connect grant funded construction of a skookum tower at the end of Dickey Drive, carrier-class microwave radios to put on the tower, licensed radio spectrum for the radios to use, and specialized professional installation and alignment.
- The new link to Hoonah Mountain is in operation now, which is what enabled Fibre Alaska to more than double its speeds late this Summer (after having already doubled its speeds in December).
- While Fibre Alaska owns the link from Gustavus to Hoonah Mountain, they purchase transport from another regional provider to get the data all the way to the gigabit of dedicated Internet access that Fibre Alaska purchases from Alaska Communications in Juneau.
- Two public community centers (the Gustavus Community Center and the Foxes' Den) and seven "essential facilities" are connected with high-speed Internet paid for two years by the grant. The library also gets its service from Fibre Alaska now under the e-rate program (not through the Community Connect grant).
- Cost and pricing: Fibre Alaska's basic plan has been upgraded to deliver up to 25 Mbit/sec down and 5 Mbit/sec up. My testing confirms these burst speeds and measures a continuous 10 Mbit/sec down and 5 Mbit/sec up, even at peak usage times. That basic plan now costs $94/month with no data caps. Faster and more expensive premium and deluxe residential plans are available with speeds up to 100 Megabit/sec down for $164/month. Business plans are also available. The more expensive plans come with priority technical and customer support and are first in line for available shared bandwidth. Low-income subscribers can qualify for monthly discounts up to $75 through the Affordable Connectivity Program. See Fibre Alaska's plans. Installation could be free to expensive, depending on the customer location and commitment and whether more public funding becomes available for new hookups.
Starlink
- SpaceX's Starlink low-earth orbit satellite Internet service became available in Gustavus last summer. The service is easy to set up and provides broadband speeds (by today's definition, up to 100 Mbit/s down) with latency almost as low as a terrestrial connection. Unlike HughesNet and StarBand before it, Starlink works quite well for two-way voice and video, virtual private networks, and gaming, and includes a generous data allowance (HughesNet slowed customers on its basic plans after 20GB).
- Starlink won't work for everyone in Gustavus because it requires an excellent view of the sky. Unlike HughesNet, customers don't just need to see one fixed satellite; they need to be able to track multiple satellites moving overhead along different paths. Fortunately, the Starlink smartphone app has an excellent site survey tool; a potential customer can test various locations before ordering the $600 dish to get a reasonably accurate idea of what to expect.
- Cost and pricing: Starlink's standard residential plan often delivers a continuous 100 Mbit/s down to many users. It costs $600 for the dish and currently $90/month for service in Gustavus. Prices vary by region and customer density; one Gustavus Starlink user reports starting at $90/month in West Texas, later getting a $30 price increase because theirs became a "high use area." Starlink also offers business, roaming, and mobility plans at higher price points. The roaming plan might be a good value for seasonal residents because the service can be paused when it is not needed.
Cellular
- Cellular data performance has also improved in the last decade; AT&T upgraded their Gustavus site to 3G not long after the Gustavus broadband plan was adopted, and later to 4G/LTE. ACS, who had 1xRTT data (dial-up speeds) in 2012, sold their wireless operatons to GCI. I'm not actually sure what kind of service CDMA cellular customers are getting in Gustavus now, except that I know cellular range has, if anything, decreased with the technology upgrades. The newer generations are designed for places with thousands of cell phones and dozens of towers, where speed is more important than range.
Other?
- What else are people doing for Internet in Gustavus now?
- Maybe some are still on HughesNet?
- Bartlett Cove has fast service thanks to NPS and (currently) SnowCloud.
- Maybe some still don't have Internet at home. Back in 2012, a lot of people relied on the Gustavus Public Library to meet their connectivity needs. Now we have two more community centers, plus Wi-Fi hotspots at some local businesses.
- What else are people doing for Internet in Gustavus now?
Comparison
- It's possible some Gustavus residents, who live close to the airport and are very light Internet users, can satisfy their Internet needs using cellular data, at least for now. Maybe others like being offline and don't care to connect their homes, or can't or won't shoulder the expense. Or they live at Bartlett Cove, where service is provided along with housing. For everyone else, the best options are Fibre Alaska and Starlink. I've solicited customer stories and relied on my personal knowledge and testing to make a comparison between the two.
Factor\Provider
Price
Installation: depends on location and commitment (could be free).
$94/month for basic plan
The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) pays up to $75/month of low income customers' Internet bill.
Installation: $599
$90/month for standard residential
Does not participate in ACP.
Speed
Up to 25 Mbit/s down, 5 up.
Continuous downloads measured consistently at 10 Mbit/s
A user with both reports: "My experience is that the fiber is... slow enough to keep me from being able to do any kind of media or download adjacent work."
Up to 204 Mbit/s down, 15 up. Experience varies considerably, but rarely if ever drops below 25 Mbit/s
"Sometimes download speeds are well over 100 mbps (upload speeds never get above 15 mbps)."
One reliable witness reports download speeds consistently in the 25-35 Mbit/s range despite having a good view of the sky and very few interruptions.
Another reports download speeds up to 190 Mbit/s, averaging about 100 Mbit/sec for very large downloads of games on Steam, even though "My starlink is very obstructed. I experience 3-12 secs of outage every min."
When I tested the Starlink business service that Fibre Alaska has for backup, I got 31-47 Mbit/s downloads (during prime time, 8:30 pm).
Quality
RTT ping times to Google are typically 50 ms (Juneau is only 3-5 ms away)
Jitter (variability in ping times) is very low regardless of load or time of day.
Packet loss is well below 0.05%
RTT ping times as measured by speed tests are typically in the 50-200ms range, but vary anywhere from 36 to 654 ms, with much higher latency when the connection is loaded.
This variability contributes to significantly higher jitter than Fibre Alaska, which can affect the most sensitive interactive applications (doesn't matter for streaming video, downloads, and web browsing).
Packet loss is 0.6%, based on my experience with long-term monitoring of a Starlink connection in California.
Users' experience will vary depending on obstructions. For example, one user whose "treetops obscure the signal some of the time" writes, "WIFI calling works but freezes every few minutes. Typically, it doesn’t drop the call. Virtual meetings with video worked better than anticipated, but like WIFI calling, freezes periodically."
Reliability
Subject to rare, usually short, outages. Most recently, customers experienced intermittent disruption when fine-tuning alignment on the microwave link to Juneau did not go as planned on September 25. Generally, however, the fiber network and terrestrial microwave backhaul with redundant links deliver the best available reliability, and the local crew keeps downtime to a minimum.
A user with both services reports: "My experience is that the fiber is more reliable."
Dependability of the satellite network seems good so far. Short interruptions, usually unnoticed, are common as the system switches between satellites. For users with an imperfect view of the sky, interruptions are longer, more frequent, and more noticeable. I experienced significant degradation, including multi-minute outages, during severe downpours in California (typical Gustavus rain is not an issue; I don't know about heavy snow).
One user with a good view of the sky reports, "Teams video calls occasionally stutter. Facebook calls work really well. Wifi cell calls work almost all the time."
Service
A large majority of customers I have spoken with give Fibre Alaska high marks for attentiveness and responsiveness to issues. One was lukewarm about their communications and status notifications. Two were dissatisfied with their interactions. Another user writes, "On a few occasions, where I needed to upload some massive files, Janusz has opened up my upload pipe to help speed the upload. Then after I’m done, he turns it back down. I doubt Elon Musk would offer me the same option."
According to one customer, "Have heard they have terrible customer service, but haven't needed it."
Other
The local option is like a buying club; Internet access is cheaper in bulk, so the more we collectively use it, the faster and more affordable it will get.
Currently offers no option to "pause" service for seasonal customers.
The residential service has no seasonal "pause" option, but one customer is trying the $150/month roam service, which can be started and stopped on a monthly basis.
Best for
Users of sensitive interactive applications like two-way voice and video, gaming, and VPNs
Users who want to support the local option
Users who do not have enough sky for Starlink
Best value for users who routinely download gigabytes of data
Prognosis
When Cordova Telecom completes their submarine fiber optic cable to Gustavus, Fibre Alaska will have access to virtually unlimited upstream data (though at unknown cost). Whatever data makes it to Gustavus can be delivered to Fibre Alaska customers over their GPON network (up to 10,000 Mbit/s down with an electronics upgrade).
Starlink has said they intend to someday offer 10,000 Mbit/s down.
- It's very difficult to make direct comparisons between these two services because measurement is tricky and the user experience is somewhat subjective and varies with time and location. For Starlink, the speed and quality measurements and reports seem quite variable depending on the installation location, time of day, and unknown factors (possibly throttling for heaviest users?). Flawed and subjective as it is, this summary will be outdated almost as soon as it is published, because networks and services are changing so fast. For example, I talked with two former Fibre Alaska customers who complained that the 2 Mbit/s speed they were getting with Fibre Alaska last summer was inadequate. But Fibre Alaska has had two major speed increases since then (it is now five times faster) so last summer's experience is already outdated.
- My working impression is that, as expected, fiber to the premises delivers the most consistent and reliable service available. The basic service is now plenty fast for streaming videos to a couple of screens, and faster plans are available for larger households and heavier users. During prime time, I measured speeds up to 47 Mbit/s down and 13 up while temporarily using Fibre Alaska's Deluxe plan, which advertises speeds up to 100 Mbit/sec down and 20 up for $164. Janusz reports that's comparable to GCI's “gig” or red internet service in Juneau, but for 18% less (GCI's service offers faster uploads). He emphasizes that the higher tiers don't just get faster minimum speeds; they also get priority for available shared bandwidth, so they are less affected by network congestion (higher-tier customers also get priority customer service). For raw speed, Fibre Alaska's deluxe plan is roughly comparable to Starlink's standard residential service, but it is superior for quality of service, works in the trees, and has no data caps (Starlink reportedly may slow down customers who use the most data). Fibre Alaska's deluxe plan currently costs 82% more than Starlink's standard residential service. Therefore, Starlink may be a better value on a strictly dollars per megabyte basis for the heaviest downloaders, but Fibre Alaska will be best when flawless voice and video calls matter. Interestingly, I corresponded with two Internet-dependent customers who have both Starlink and Fibre Alaska to assure they will always be able to work and conduct business.
Affordability
- While Gustavus residents can now purchase excellent Internet service with as much speed and data as they can afford, it still comes at a high price. Unfortunately, the high cost of dedicated Internet access to feed Alaskan Internet Service Providers is a state-wide and national problem outside our local control. Of course, the high cost is due partly to our low population density and challenging terrain, but as Janusz explained at his open house, natural unregulated monopolies are also at fault. He called for public ownership of big middle-mile backbones, like other advanced nations have, and like we have with other critical infrastructure like highways, ports, and ferries. Failing that, he would like to see Internet service regulated the way telephone service is, with price controls and public-interest requirements. He lamented that the billions of dollars of public investment in broadband is largely being used to enrich large telecommunication companies and strengthen their monopolies. We are in this fix because AT&T and other large incumbents put their money in big, competitive markets where it will preserve their market share and earn the best return, instead of investing to expand capacity, lower prices, and meet the exponentially-growing demand in rural areas where their monopoly is unchallenged. Alternative providers' middle-mile segments are making inroads, but it's a long way to Seattle.
For Internet access and value, the U.S. lags other nations, and Alaska distantly lags every other state. Global Broadband Index, Where in the world has the cheapest WiFi? | Compare the Market
A Decade From Now
- If my experience running the Gustavus Community Network taught me one thing, it is that demand for Internet performance grows exponentially. This knowledge could influence what technologies and systems we adopt now. The wireless equipment and DSL modems we used 10 years ago could not have delivered 10 Mbit/s, much less the up to 100 Mbit/s we enjoy now from Starlink and Fibre Alaska, much less what we will demand ten years hence. We know Fibre Alaska's network is up to the gigabit+ challenge. Starlink claims to be, but has yet to prove it.
How far we've come in the last decade, and how might we fare in the next: This logarithmic chart shows that Gustavus customers now have access to speeds one hundred times faster than 10 years ago, at a cost per megabit a hundred times lower than it was. It seems likely that we will have access to (or at least want) gigabit speeds a decade from now, if not 10 gigabit. Cost is much harder to predict. Source: Author's records, calculations, approximations, and speculation
- Cellular
- I've heard some speculation that 5G cellular service (not to be confused with 5 GHz Wi-Fi) will improve cell service here in Gustavus, but that technology has even less range than previous generations, so it will only benefit those with very strong cell signals now; everyone else will see even weaker signals than they have. Discussions about one or more additional cell towers to improve coverage periodically resurface, but it's hard to imagine a provider making the required multi-million dollar investment to serve this market, especially when AT&T persistently claims they already cover all of Gustavus, including Bartlett Cove.
- Fiber
- As if it weren't enough that Gustavus now has a gigabit microwave backhaul and gigabit+ fiber optic to the premises, we learned recently that Cordova Telecom has been awarded a grant to build an undersea fiber optic cable from Juneau to Cordova, with landings at Hoonah Mountain and in Gustavus, Pelican, and Yakutat. This will add virtually unlimited data capacity once it is completed in about 2026.
- Satellite
- Starlink has said they intend to someday offer 10,000 Mbit/s down.
Conclusion
- Fibre Alaska has delivered the extraordinary achievement of a robusT all-fiber last-mile network with even higher capacity than the hybrid fiber-coax network envisioned in the 2012 Gustavus Broadband Plan. Furthermore, they have broken AT&T's stranglehold on Gustavus Internet data by building their own much faster link to Juneau. Meanwhile, Starlink has delivered the extraordinary achievement of a low-earth orbit satellite constellation delivering 100+ Mbit/s, coupled with user-friendly do-it-yourself equipment installation. As a result, Gustavus residents have a choice of broadband providers offering performance 100 times faster than we had a decade ago, costing 100 times less on a per-megabyte basis. We are also well positioned for the next decade, with both services planning for next-generation speeds.
- Many Gustavus residents (not those in dense forest) now have a choice between providers, each of which has strengths and weaknesses. While Fiber Alaska's service has the edge in quality and reliability, Starlink offers heavy downloaders the lowest cost per megabyte. Most users will be happy with either service, so their choice might hinge on factors like price, service, and expectations about the future. Personally, I am delighted with Fibre Alaska's service and glad to support the robust local network I envisioned a decade ago. How well it works for all of us over time, as well as its ultimate viability, depends partly on how many of us take advantage of it.