Small town, big sky: OneWeb satellites connect to ground facility in Talkeetna
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - The small town of Talkeetna may not be the first place people think of as the vanguard for an emerging technology, but at the moment that is exactly what it is.
“It’s a fantastic feeling,” said Chuck Schumann, CEO of Pacific Dataport, adding, “It’s always been that Alaska would be at the tail end of whatever new technology was available and in this case Alaska is first.”
The new technology in question are the low Earth orbit satellites that the company OneWeb is planning to use to bring high-speed internet to Alaska and eventually to the entire world.
To make that happen, the satellites already in space and the few remaining that are set to launch later this summer will have to connect with ground facilities known as gateways.
According to Joe Paciaroni, OneWeb’s director of ground infrastructure, the site in Talkeetna is the only gateway that will be needed for all of Alaska, but they do have others around the globe.
