Finding Alaska's Villages: And Connecting Them by Alex Hills

Author:Alex Hills
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alex Hills Associates
Published: 2016-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

9-3 Nome was among the towns where COMSAT demonstrated the operation of a small satellite earth station.

COMSAT had clearly demonstrated the feasibility of small earth stations in Alaska. They would work even in the far north. But the successful COMSAT demonstration project seemed to have caused concern at RCA headquarters. The company may have worried that COMSAT wanted to provide telecommunication services in Alaska, a big threat to RCA’s dominant position in the state.

RCA’s 1973 tests of the coverage of the Canadian Anik satellite may have been a response to this threat. If COMSAT could serve Alaska by using INTELSAT IV, RCA could do the same using Anik, and that was shown by RCA’s 1973 tests, which reached pretty much the same conclusion as the COMSAT demonstration.

With two successful tests of small satellite earth stations in rural Alaska- — one by COMSAT and one by RCA — I was optimistic we would soon have a better communication system for Alaska villages. The deployment of small satellite earth stations, which could be used for television, telephone and other kinds of communication, seemed two steps closer.

Still, I wondered if the successful tests had really convinced RCA’s executives that satellite communication was the right technology for Alaska’s villages.

I thought my new pen pal, the RCA Alaska CEO, might tell me.

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