High-Performance Broadband in the Land of the Midnight Sun

Home to pristine wilderness, abundant wildlife, and high adventure, Alaska holds breathtaking allure for visitors and locals alike. From waterways full of whales at Kenai Fjords to the mountain tundra of Denali National Park, Alaska is bursting with natural wonders. Its northernmost reaches are dubbed “land of the midnight sun”—where the sun never dips below the horizon during the summer.

But all that rugged beauty and vast distance also create major communications challenges. Just ask Will Johnson, an entrepre- neur whose experience—and frustration—with spotty Internet connectivity while operating a flight school in the western part of the state led him to start Alaska Satellite Internet.

“We’re so desperate for connectivity in this part of the world,” said Johnson. “We just couldn’t get any connection that was worth a darn.”

Johnson’s company began reselling HughesNet broad- band satellite service in 2006, and continues to provide this high-quality Internet access for the many hunting and fishing lodges, work camps, oil rigs, gold mines, government agencies, schools, police stations, and tribal offices that make Alaska’s economy and public sector work.

Meeting Growing Needs

But soon after getting reliable connectivity, customers began to demand higher bandwidth and value-added applications, such as Voice (VoIP) and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). Enter Hughes High QoS. Based on the company’s advanced HX System platform, Hughes High QoS Service is a turnkey, bundled package of hardware, software, and network hub capacity that enables Virtual Network Operators (VNOs) like Alaska Satellite Internet to offer high-bandwidth and VPN services without requiring a large upfront investment.

Its extensive capabilities give Alaska Satellite the ability to prioritize traffic by class for each customer, ensuring committed information rates for mission-critical business applications and latency-sensitive applications such as VoIP phone calls and full-motion video.

High Bandwidth. Low Latency.

“Hughes High-QoS has been a very successful service for us,” said Johnson. “It has opened up our ability to serve businesses and tribal organizations. It’s very popular with customers who consume a lot of bandwidth, mostly in the business market, and for some residences. They like the unlimited download plans and the service’s consistency and low latency, which are especially important when they’re running multiple business applications or a private network over multiple sites.”

The Hughes High-QoS Service is also ideal for specialized industries such as oil/gas exploration, maritime, and mining.

Rock-Solid

Because distance and extreme weather make maintenance and repairs difficult and expensive, reliability makes the service popular with business customers who can’t afford outages.

According to Johnson, “It’s rock-solid dependable. I don’t know of anything in the bush that’s more dependable.”

Indeed, dependability is the hallmark of Hughes High-QoS Service. No matter the location, businesses, Indian tribes, and residences can depend on Alaska Satellite Internet and Hughes for high-performance Internet service—even as far as the land of the midnight sun.