For Sitka residents, the two-week long internet outage last August was a mixture of chaos and relief, depending on how closely entwined someone’s life had become with instant communication.
For businesses, though, the outage was a direct financial hit. Routine credit card transactions didn’t work, there was no online banking, no cell phone service – and it wasn’t the first time Sitka had experienced all this.
Take the Sitka Telecommunications Outage Business Impact Survey.
The stories started reaching Garry White almost right away.
“I had one gentleman tell me that in that 16-day outage, he estimated sales lost of $75,000,” said White, “so that’s a pretty tough hit to take to your business.”
Garry White is the director of the Sitka Economic Development Association. He continues, “I heard another story about a person losing a $10,000 sale in one day because the card wouldn’t go through, and they couldn’t call the card company. They finally figured out a way to do it through another provider, and then the customer got called, but of course, the call didn’t go through to their phone, so that sale was lost, too.”
That was the genesis of the Sitka Telecommunications Outage Business Impact Survey, which White launched shortly after internet service was restored in early September. So far, the numbers tell a compelling story: 18-percent of respondents to date report losing $10,000 or more because of the outage; 32-percent of respondents made the switch from GCI, owner of the faulty fiber optic cable, to the satellite-based service Starlink.
White wants to compile this growing body of data, and the side stories, into a report that will allow Sitka to advocate for government support. The Biden Administration just authorized another $1 billion for Alaska in the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment Program – or BEAD – but White says Sitka isn’t eligible for BEAD funding. Because as long as the undersea fiber optic cable remains intact, Sitka seems in pretty good shape.
“Well, none of this money is available for served communities (like Sitka),” said White, “and none of it’s available to do redundant link ups to your community. So we really have no help coming.”
White is pursuing a couple of other government angles: the US Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Services Group, and also the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), because of the lapses in communication in emergency response in Sitka (a search and rescue effort during the outage was impaired, but the victim was eventually found alive), both with 9-1-1 calls and calls to the Coast Guard.
White doesn’t think Sitka is as “served” as its providers suggest, especially in summertime when thousands of cruise passengers come ashore. He’s personally found internet download speeds to be far below the 100 megabytes-per-second advertised. He believes the problem will continue to grow.
“The more we see our businesses move to more internet-based ways of bookkeeping, and of everything else,” he said, “this is going to be more and more important going forward.”
White wants every business, large and small, to take the survey, in order to paint a clear picture of what the outage cost the community. While the event wasn’t tragic – and even brought out the best in some people – it was a significant financial blow.
“The story needs to be told, because to me, it’s not acceptable right now to be losing the internet for weeks at a time every eight years,” he said.
White notes that both failures of the fiber optic internet cable to Sitka occurred on the seafloor in Salisbury Sound. He thinks reinforcing the cable in that area is a good idea, “but overall it would be great to get some redundancy or other providers in town.”
The Sitka Telecommunications Outage Business Impact Survey will be open until Thanksgiving.
Brooke Schafer contributed to this story.
