On Thursday the Biden-Harris Administration recommended four tribal entities be awarded funding for fiber internet projects, including a project linking Nome to St. Lawrence Island.
The 160 mile subsea cable from Nome to St. Lawrence Island would include connections to both Savoonga and Gambell and provide over 400 households with fiber internet connections at home.
Nome-based tribal nonprofit, Kawerak, Inc, submitted an application for the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program in 2021 for just over $40 million.
Kawerak's Tribal Affairs Program Director, Cheri McConnell celebrated the news in a release sent to KNOM.
"For decades, our communities have faced significant barriers due to inadequate communication infrastructure, which has hindered education, healthcare, economic development, and the preservation and sharing of our cultural heritage. This project will lay the foundation for a future where our residents can access vital resources, participate in global opportunities, and maintain a strong connection to cultural traditions," McConnell said.
The initial application was not selected in NTIA’s first round of awardees, although Kawerak was awarded an Equitable Distribution of $1 million in 2024 to keep the project moving forward. Kawerak, along with subrecipient Quintillion, have begun using the funds to complete a feasibility study.
Quintillion’s Director of Operations, Art Paul, said some progress has already been made.
“We've sent engineers, we've sent scientists to study the area,” Paul explained. “It's been very eye-opening, hopefully beneficial to the community to know that not only are we onsite doing some work to figure out how to give them service, we're also taking their advice and asking them for their input.”
Paul said they hope to collaborate with the two communities to find the best place to bring cables ashore and develop training for locals should the connection go offline.
“We're also going to do our best to do some training locally in each community so when things break, we don't want to make them wait for us to fly there to fix it,” Paul said. “We’d love to have them trained so that they can flip a switch or reset a network card in a box somewhere, or maybe even resplice fiber.”
Quintillion is also constructing a new subsea fiber internet line that spans from Nome to Homer. Paul did not rule out completing parts of both projects simultaneously for efficiency’s sake. Construction of the Nome to Homer Express is expected to be complete in 2026 and enter operations in 2027.