GCI's Alaska Subsea Fiber Breaks Start to Pile Up and Cost Money

Alaska: The subsea fiber accidents are starting to pile up for GCI, Alaska’s largest communications provider offering mobile and fixed broadband service. CEO Ron Duncan disclosed Wednesday a new subsea fiber tear near Deering, a tiny city on Kotzebue Sound that feeds into the Arctic Ocean. Repairs won’t take overnight. “We expect to incur repair costs this year in the low single million range with service expected to be restored in Deering during the summer months after the ice goes out.” If that delay sounds familiar, it should. Last January, Quintillion (owned by D.C.-based Grain Management) had a subsea fiber break in the Beaufort Sea that repair crews couldn’t touch for about nine months because of darkness, thick ice, and other environmental challenges. Two months ago, GCI had a second subsea fiber incident off Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands that took two weeks to repair. In 2024 and 2025, GCI’s subsea fiber line feeding into Sitka (Alaska’s first territorial capital) was cut, with significant service disruption to the locals that was ameliorated by shipments from Starlink, the low Earth orbit satellite Internet access service. (More after paywall.)