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- Getting here from Anchorage, about 700 miles away, requires two flights. Roads do not connect the two places. Basics like milk and bread are delivered by air, and gas is brought in by barge during the summer.
“I don’t know if people even know that we exist,” said Daisy Sage, the mayor.
- Many of Point Hope’s older residents cringe at the incursion of technology. For the most part, this is still a traditional community of Inupiaq native Alaskans. Until the 1970s, many families lived in sod houses framed with whale bones.
- But interviews with dozens of Point Hope residents suggest that people here see Quintillion’s cable as a way of connecting with an outside world that has long been beyond easy reach — and something that could change their lives for the better.
Leona Snyder, for one, is excited about what the connection could do for her Justice Jones, who turns 16 on Sunday. She wants him to go to college, which would mean leaving the village. Having broadband internet could help him study and research outside opportunities.