GCI notified Sitka customers by text message Sept. 16 that it had successfully restored cell phone and internet services which had been disrupted for more than two weeks by a fiber optic cable break on the bottom of Salisbury Sound.
The break in the cable on Aug. 29 shut down GCI’s internet service and also affected texting and phone service.
Company spokesman Josh Edge said Sept. 16 the cause of the break still wasn’t known. The undersea cable repair ship was headed back to its homeport of Victoria, British Columbia.
The repair work started Sept. 8 when the ship, the Cable Innovator, arrived at the site to locate, pull up and repair the line. The 477-foot-long ship, built in Finland in 1995, serves West Coast undersea cable operators.
During the outage, a substantial amount of Sitka’s essential internet services was carried over the satellite-based Starlink system that was already installed for a number of high-volume users, including Sitka’s city offices.
The Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska stepped up and shipped multiple Starlink terminals to Sitka to serve community organizations most seriously affected by the cable outage.
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