Cyberphones are selling like hotcakes in rural Alaska...
Cell phones the latest rage in Bush Alaska
ALEX DEMARBAN
December 05, 2008 at 8:34AM AKST
The cellular age has finally reached village Alaska in a big way.
As a result, villagers are signing up to get cell phones in droves, praising benefits they say will range from quicker backcountry rescues to staying in touch with large families sprawling the state.
GCI, which bills itself as Alaska’s largest telecommunications company, launched the village cellular service in dozens of communities in recent weeks.
For now, the company is blanketing two regions in Western Alaska – the Seward Peninsula and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. But officials promise to have cell phones chirping in all the state’s villages by the end of 2010.
The cell phone became mainstream technology in most of America more than a decade ago, but in rural Alaska the service has generally been restricted to hub cities such as Bethel. It also existed in a few village clusters where pioneering companies sometimes provided limited or costly plans.
The response to GCI’s new village service has been “pretty crazy,” said Sara Huff, the wireless operations manager in Anchorage.
The company turned on cellular service in 13 communities in the Nome region near Norton Sound in mid-October. There, officials expected to have 225 new customers by the end of the year.
They had 800 by early December.
The cell phones are also a big hit in 36 villages near the lower Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, said Toni Crosby, head of GCI’s office in Bethel.
The technology arrived in that region in early November. The company expected about 300 new customers within two months, Crosby said. Instead, 1,000 people signed up in half the time.
GCI officials traveling to those villages to explain various plans have been mobbed with inquiries, especially how to get a phone, she said. The questions start when the officials land at the village airstrip and don’t let up until the GCI workers leave the village several hours later.
“People are loving it,” she said.
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