Why an Arctic fiber company needs 30,000 yards of Dalton gravel

The state is preparing to sell Quintillion Networks 30,000 cubic yards of gravel from two pits along the Dalton Highway.

Quintillion operates the only fiber-optic system linking Alaska's Arctic communities — Nome, Kotzebue, Point Hope, Wainwright, Utqiaġvik, Prudhoe Bay — to the rest of the world.

Most of that network runs undersea, and the ocean has proven it's a single point of failure. Sea ice severed the cable off the northern coast in June 2023 and again in January 2025, knocking out internet and cellular service across northern communities and forcing them onto slower satellite and microwave backups.

The gravel is for the fix: a land-based fiber route down the Dalton corridor that can carry traffic when the subsea line goes down, turning a fragile single line into a self-healing loop. The company would draw gravel from a pit at Milepost 305 and from another at Milepost 366.5, both already-designated sites with cleanup obligations attached.

The buildout now sits inside a much larger deal. In April, GCI — Alaska's largest telecom — agreed to buy Quintillion for about $310 million, absorbing its roughly 1,800 miles of existing Arctic fiber and 1,500 miles of planned expansion.

Public comment on the gravel sales goes to DNR's Northern regional office.