[qi:051] AT&T’s Alaskan subsidiary, AT&T Alascom has launched a WiMAX network in Alaska. The network is part of AT&T’s long term WiMAX/Broadband plans is built with Alvarion gear (ALVR). The 1 megabits per second service is currently available in Juneau but will expand to other parts of the state. The service starts at $19.95 a month. Alaska is bit of a trend setter and one of the most wired states in the Union. On another note, has anyone noticed that Alvarion stock has been on a tear lately, mostly on good news about revenues and general hype around WiMAX
It is true that Alaska is the most wired state in the nation, but it is not because of some miraculous enthusiasm about technology. It is sheer dumb luck of geography that over half of the population of the state lives in Anchorage. Wire Anchorage, and you’ve wired half the state. Another quarter live in very infrastructure-accessible places.
Having lived in Alaska for some time I was frustrated with frequent outages from the main service provider and the $50 broadband speed was a “blazing” 900k/sec. This was true of both cable and DSL.
To be fair, this was two years ago. But still, the Midwest had +2Mb/sec available for a similar price at the same time.
Hahaha. Alaska a trendsetter in technology? Maybe, but that wasn’t my experience. I go to Alaska once a year or so since my wife’s family is from there. Last time I was there I was attempting to work off their cable modem – at a blazing 56kbps! We upgraded to something like 128kbps for an extra $10/mo. I’m glad to hear they are getting WiMax though.