Wireless internet and phone service coming to Western Prince William Sound

By Rob Cone-Clark
Special to the Turnagain Times

In an innovative application of radio broadcast technology, local telecommunications company Yukon Telephone is expanding its services into the Western Prince William Sound.

Already available in the Whittier Core area, wireless internet and phone service will soon be an option for people living, working or playing on the water out of Whittier.

“We are now completing the network backbone and hope to successfully switch on before snow fly’s,” said Yukon Telephone plant manager Kelly Carlisle. He said the company has been permitted to install three towers; one each at Trinity Point, Point Pigot and Perry Island. Coverage areas to include Passage Canal, Cochrane Bay, Port Wells, College Fjords, Lake Bay, Knight Passage and a thirty mile line of sight radius around the Perry Island tower.

Users will need an external antennae and a small “client” radio to receive the broadcast signal. After connecting to the network they will be automatically passed from tower to tower as they cruise The Sound and surf The Net. Carlisle said the system is designed to switch all traffic through Whittier Central Office and should be quite fast. He added that internet phone protocol will be of especially high quality.

“The voice data packets off the wireless net will have routing priority,” he said.

Internet on The Sound is the culmination of years of effort.

“We began permitting in 1995,” Carlisle said. “We’ve kept our footprint small and have developed wind and solar based power systems.”

He added that the existing broadcast towers enable other companies to co-locate their hardware for services such as cell phones, without having to build completely new sites.