CDMA Coverage in the Arctic Wilderness

Alaska Communications Systems has extended its CDMA network to an area of the North Slope oil fields in Alaska. Two new CDMA cell sites were turned up late last month in Deadhorse and Kuparuk, on the North Slope. The footprint covers Deadhorse, Prudhoe Bay, and Kuparuk -- the industrial centers of some of the nation's most strategic oil fields and their gravel airports, and temporary homes to hundreds of the state's oil workers, oil industry officials, and traveling dignitaries.

"Prudhoe Bay is the source of hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil traveling 800 miles through the trans-Alaska pipeline to Valdez every day. The North Slope is also home to some of the state's trillions of cubic feet of untapped natural gas under development discussions," said Liane Pelletier, chief executive officer and president of Alaska Communications Systems. "It is important to reach into these most strategic areas of the state and support the demands of the oil industry."

The two new CDMA sites provide wireless data and voice coverage in the Arctic. The data coverage area exists within the entire CDMA footprint, with wireless 1xRTT speeds peaking at multiples of dial-up. Voice coverage on the ACS network will be crystal-clear in an area that sees only analog service today.

The Alaska North Slope is the region of Alaska in the United States located on the northern slope of the Brooks Range along the coast of the Arctic Ocean. The region contains the major petroleum reserves of Alaska, until the field discovered in 1968 at Prudhoe Bay, as well as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which itself has been the subject of controversy surrounding the possibility of petroleum drilling within its boundaries. The petroleum extracted from the region is transferred south by means of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System to Valdez on the Pacific Ocean."

Posted to the site on 7th December 2005