July 17, 2006 Paris -- Alcatel today announced that its Maersk Defender cable ship will start laying a regional submarine cable network for Kodiak Kenai Cable Company--a subsidiary of the Alaskan Old Harbor Native Corporation--in Seward, Alaska. The turnkey deployment of the new Kodiak Kenai Fiber Link (KKFL) will provide the first fiber-optic connection from Anchorage and Seward to communities on the Kenai Peninsula and Kodiak Island, serving the communications requirements of approximately 60,000 citizens, plus the Alaska Aerospace Development Corp. Launch Complex on Kodiak Island.
Designed to provide an ultimate capacity of about 1 Tbit/sec, the KKFL will stretch more than 900 km with landing points in Anchorage, Homer and Kenai, Mill Bay, and Narrow Cape. The project completion is scheduled by December 2006.
The high-speed network connectivity and greater capacity offered by KKFL will help open up new economic development and enhance existing activities, such as providing improved access for research and education, as well as enabling advanced telemedicine applications. Kodiak Kenai Cable Company is working with local and long distance exchange carriers to provide access to broadband capacity for voice, Internet, and other data services, including Ethernet-based services.
"This achievement will enable us to give access to new, advanced services to a larger number of residential and business users, while enhancing the security and quality of existing services," explains Walt Ebell, CEO of Kodiak Kenai Cable Company. "Alcatel's outstanding expertise in optical networks, coupled with a top offering of professional services, was the key factor in our choice."
"With KKFL, Kodiak Kenai Cable Company is re-shaping the regional communications infrastructure, bringing new network capacity and reliability to support the community development," contends Jean Godeluck, president of Alcatel's submarine network activity. "This new achievement confirms Alcatel's commitment to be the partner of choice for submarine network deployments, following our selection and successful completion of most of the regional submarine projects recently launched."
Alcatel will deploy its unrepeatered submarine cable and terminal technology along with its 1677 SL SONET multiplexer equipment to provide flexible connectivity at the network's landing stations. Future capacity expansions can be implemented using DWDM to meet future traffic demands in a scalable manner. Alcatel also is providing a set of services, including terrestrial and marine installation and network commissioning.