Ile-De-Brehat

Western Alaska just got one step closer to high-speed internet. That’s because, after years of planning and wrangling permits, Quintillion is finally ready to lay fiber optic cable from Prudhoe Bay to Nome. The telecom company has one vessel stationed in the Bering Sea and another close behind. The Ile de Brehat has left its homeport in France, passed through the Panama Canal, and will soon arrive in Nome. That’s where the vessel will start laying a path of fiber optic cable below the sea floor — a path that will wind more than a thousand miles up to the North Slope. Right now, though, the ship is docked in Dutch Harbor, and a group of Quintillion’s executives and investors is climbing aboard. “This is the cable ship Ile de Brehat,” said Captain Charles Souffre. “So first of all, welcome on board, all of you.” Souffre is in charge of the nearly 500-foot-long vessel and its 70-member crew. They run the ship on behalf of Alcatel Submarine Networks, the French company Quintillion hired to make and lay the cable system. They’ll start trenching outside of Nome any day now, and the operation will run 24 hours a day through September, relying on a careful configuration of multimillion-dollar equipment. http://www.ktoo.org/2016/07/23/french-company-promises-western-alaska-high-speed-internet/