Four Yukon villages get money for broadband design, not construction

Four Yukon River villages will get broadband engineering and design work under a $2.5 million federal award to Tanana Chiefs Conference. Nobody gets connected by it. The money buys planning for Ruby, Galena, Nulato and Koyukuk, and construction is a separate step that is not funded.

The trunk line those villages would eventually branch from is running well behind. A $50.6 million federal grant awarded in August 2022 is laying fiber from Fairbanks to the Yukon River Bridge and on to Fort Yukon, Tanana, Beaver, Stevens Village and Rampart. A sonar scan in summer 2025 found the river below Rampart too swift for buried cable, forcing an overland reroute along the Elliott Highway. Doyon says completion has moved from July 2026 to December 2027, a slip of about 17 months.

TCC has been working on this stretch for years. Its 2023 broadband map already listed all four villages as candidates for fiber running to each house, in partnership with Alaska Communications, and its December 2024 newsletter described a pending $77 million application to run fiber along the Yukon from Tanana to Holy Cross, the stretch these villages sit on. The organization has not said where that application stands.

The new award also funds a digital workforce program in Holy Cross, with technology training, equipment and stipends for participants who finish. Cortnie Doan, TCC's legal manager and acting infrastructure director, said on the organization's weekly broadcast that the aim is to let people reach education, employment and health care from their home communities.

TCC has taken a project the whole way before. A $4.5 million award under the same federal program covered both design and construction for 432 households in Northway, Nenana, Eagle, Dot Lake and Tanacross.