General Communication

GCI Communication Corp. (GCI) is a telecommunications corporation (NASDAQ: GNCMA) operating in Alaska. Through its own facilities and agreements with other providers, GCI provides cable television service, Internet access, and wireline and cellular telephone service.

Products

Television

Based in Anchorage, GCI provides cable television service to approximately three-quarters of Alaska residents. [http://www.gci.com/about/coover.htm] GCI has upgraded most of its network to support digital cable broadcasts and provides high-definition broadcasts in some of the state's larger cities. [http://www.gci.com/forhome/cable/hdtv.htm] . GCI leases an array of analog and digital cable boxes, including HD and DVR digital cable boxes, to its customers. As of February 2008 all of Anchorage's channel line up is broad casted in digital.

GCI also provides content to the state-operated Alaska Rural Communications Service satellite system, which in turn provides free over-the-air broadcasts of commercial and public television programs to 235 rural Alaskan communities. [http://www.alaska.net/~arcs/arcs/]

Internet

GCI provides access to the Internet via multiple means. As of January 2007, GCI provides cable modem services in major cities in Alaska with download speeds up to 10 megabits per second. In the rural cities of Nome, Cordova, Bethel, and Barrow, GCI provides high-speed cable modem services but uses a satellite for the backhaul connection, as the cost to lay cable to these remote areas is prohibitively expensive. [http://portal.gci.net/support/kb/kb83/] In some rural communities where GCI does not have a cable TV infrastructure, it provides lower-bandwidth (56-512 kbit/s) wireless Internet access over a satellite backhaul. [http://www.gci.com/forhome/internet/wireless/wirelessnet.htm]

Through its own facilities and agreements with other providers, primarily Alaska Communications Systems, GCI provides data network and Internet connections via DSL, PRI leased lines (such as a T1), and other high-bandwidth business-class products. These services are aimed at the business market. [http://www.gci.com/forbusiness/internet/index.htm] The state government is a major customer of GCI, using GCI's infrastructure to provide the backbone for the state's wide area network.

GCI maintains local access numbers throughout the state for analog dial-up service.

GCI also owns Alaska United fiber optic cable system, which connects Anchorage and Fairbanks with Internet points of presence in Seattle and Portland. [http://www.alaskaunited.com] GCI leases capacity on their system to other Internet providers in Alaska, including Clearwire wireless broadband.

Wireline Telephone

GCI offers local telephone service in many Alaskan markets as well as intrastate and interstate long-distance. As the competitive local exchange carrier, GCI primarily contracts with the incumbent local exchange carrier, Alaska Communications Systems, to provide the local loop from GCI's switches to customers. (This practice is known as UNE-loop.)

GCI is currently deploying digital cable telephony based on PacketCable technology in Anchorage as a replacement for the analog copper last mile and plans to expand the service to Fairbanks and Juneau [http://www.gci.com/forhome/calling/digital_local_phone_service.htm] . In GCI's implementation, the connection between the GCI head end and the subscriber's EMTA uses IP packets but is interconnected with GCI's more traditional circuit-switched infrastructure and backbone. ["Balancing Responsibilities and Rights: A Regulatory Model for Facilities-Based VoIP Competition", National Cable and Telecommunications Association, February 2004. Accessed via http://ncta.com/DocumentBinary.aspx?id=318.]

GCI also provides legacy as well as Cisco VoIP telephony for many customers, including the state government.

Wireless Telephone

Through an agreement with Dobson Communications Systems, which provides TDMA and GSM cellular service under the Cellular One brand, GCI sells GSM cellular service under its own name while providing Dobson with the back-end network infrastructure. AT&T's purchase of Dobson, however, resulted in an agreement on December 3, 2007 that will release Dobson, now under the AT&T Wireless brand, from its contract to use GCI for its back-end network on July 1, 2008; AT&T will use existing AT&T Alascom networks. GCI will continue to contract with AT&T Wireless for the use and resale of its products and services through June 30, 2012 but will also invest $100 million in its own network. It also plans to spend approximately $10 million to complete its acquisition of the remaining 20% of Alaska Digitel, a competing CDMA-based cellular carrier. [Anchorage Daily News: [http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/262518.html GCI will pump $100 million into its network] . Published January 12, 2008.]

ee also

* Other cable based services.

References

External links

* [http://www.gci.com/ General Communication, Inc.]
* [http://www.schoolaccess.net/ GCI SchoolAccess]
* [http://www.connectmd.com/ GCI ConnectMD]