Fixed Wireless Business

Broadband Comes to Coffman Cove

For communities still languishing in the digital divide, Coffman Cove's municipally funded and operated WISP should be an inspiration and could be a model. If it can be done here in Alaska, it can be done anywhere.

by Gerry Blackwell [May 27, 2003]

Coffman Cove in southeastern Alaska is by no means the remotest place in the world, or even in Alaska—just one of the remotest. Yet as of June 6, this tiny, isolated village on the shores of Prince of Wales Island will officially join the global village. Broadband Internet access is coming to Coffman Cove.

To get to Coffman Cove, you fly to Prince Rupert in Canada, then take a ferry north to Ketchikan, Alaska. Another three-hour ferry ride from Ketchikan brings you to the island, and from there it's two and a half hours by mostly bad roads.

A long way to go for not much. The town has about 200 inhabitants in the summer, 140 in winter. There are several bed and breakfast hotels, a bunkhouse, two small stores and a gas station. That's it.

The year-round inhabitants are commercial fishermen, road construction workers or loggers. The latter are either out of work, because logging in the area ended in 2000, or go elsewhere for work. Summer brings the back-to-the-landers.

What's the appeal? Well, there's a pod of whales in the inland waterway on which the town nestles. There are eagle and bear in the woods. "It's just really, really beautiful," says City of Coffman Cove project manager Elaine Price. But it's more than that too.

"We say it's like living in the fifties," Price says. "Nobody locks their doors ever. The kids can go out and play all day and you don't have to worry. There's no crime at all. And whenever anyone gets hurt or sick, the whole community comes out."

That close-knit community spirit is part of the broadband story. Ed Buxtel, executive vice president of Costa Mesa, Calif.-based SkyFrames Inc., the satellite company that is helping bring broadband to Coffman Cove, calls it "democracy in action."

Earlier this year the municipal council voted 44 to five (with 11 abstaining) on a resolution to invest just under $30,000 in satellite terminal and wireless hotspot equipment which, with the remote assistance of SkyFrames, the city will use to operate its own wireless ISP.

"This community decided to be proactive and take control of its own destiny," is how Buxtel puts it.

SkyFrames is excited about Coffman Cove because there are another 320 small communities in Alaska, most of which want broadband access and can't get it many other ways. Buxtel says the state squandered over $10 million in federal funds earmarked for getting Alaska online—ending up with exactly three broadband-connected communities. "For that we could have connected 150 towns," he says.

So the rest of Alaska's small communities that were left out in the cold when the federal money ran out will be watching eagerly to see how Coffman Cove fares.

The town and its residents probably ought to be interested in whether other communities follow in their footsteps. The bigger a commitment SkyFrames makes to rural Alaska, the better the service Coffman Cove will receive. But for the locals, it's first and foremost about improving the quality of their lives.

Their first taste of the Internet came with a short-lived local ISP, Cove Connect, which used the town's microwave phone system to offer dial-up service. "It was too expensive and too slow," Price says. Subscribers paid $70 a month for connections that frequently dipped as low as 14.4 Kbps.

When Cove Connect disconnected, residents were stuck with calling long distance to the nearest AOL or WorldCom POP—just as slow and even more expensive.

"When you access the Internet, you're always conscious of how long you're on there," Price says. "You always just go on, do what you have to do and get off. There's never an opportunity to search around or shop. You just don't do that."

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