Internet competition in every Alaska borough or census area
29 boroughs and census areas, 257,108 residential locations, counted block by block from the FCC's own filing. The boroughs and census areas with the worst competition scores in Alaska are also among the worst served: not one of the 11 has fiber in every block, and gigabit availability across them starts at 0.0%. The one with the best competition score still has no fiber in 28.1% of it.
The finding: the competition score and the fiber gap are different problems here
Our national study ranks Alaska 50 of 52 for wired competition: 36.6% of residential locations sit in a census block where at most one wired company reports service. The borough or census area view is where you find out what that number is actually made of, and in this state the answer is not the one North Dakota gave.
11 Alaska boroughs and census areas score 99.5% or higher, holding 24,294 residential locations. 0 of those 11 have no locations at all in a block without fiber, and gigabit availability across them runs 0.0% to 78.4%.
The last column of the table below names the operator reaching the widest share of each. Across that group they are: ALASKA COMMUNICATIONS, AP&T Wireless, Inc., Bristol Bay Telephone Cooperative Inc, Copper Valley Telephone, Fibre Alaska, GCI Communication Corp., Matanuska Telecom Association Inc., Nushagak Electric Telephone Cooperative, United Utilities, Inc. In North Dakota that column was rural cooperatives that had built fiber to everybody in their own territory, which is why the monopoly score there measures territory rather than deprivation. It does not read that way here: not one of the 11 is without a fiber gap, and gigabit availability across them starts at 0.0%. In Alaska the worst competition scores and the worst service are landing on the same boroughs and census areas, which is the opposite of the North Dakota reading rather than a variation on it.
So the competition figure here is measuring both, and the boroughs and census areas it is worth acting on are the ones low on the fiber column rather than high on the monopoly column. A block with one company is a monopoly by any definition, and a resident there has no alternative and no competitive pressure on price. Both things are true at once, and a number that cannot tell them apart should say so rather than be quietly averaged into a national ranking.
It inverts in the cities, which is the other half of the point. Petersburg Borough has the best competition figure in the state at 0.7%, and 28.1% of its locations are in a block where nobody reports fiber at all. Anchorage Municipality, the largest by locations, is 13.8% and 82.4%.
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Every Alaska borough or census area
Sorted by the share of residential locations in a block with at most one wired company, worst first. The first three columns are computed here from the block level filing. Gigabit is the FCC's own borough or census area figure, which is the finest grain they publish speed at.
| Borough or census area | Residential locations | At most one wired company | No fiber in the block | Gigabit available | Widest reaching wired operator |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bethel Census Area | 5,795 | 100.0% | 81.0% | 0.0% | United Utilities, Inc. (63%) |
| Southeast Fairbanks Census Area | 4,086 | 100.0% | 76.1% | 12.4% | ALASKA COMMUNICATIONS (44%) |
| Copper River Census Area | 3,224 | 100.0% | 0.4% | 78.4% | Copper Valley Telephone (100%) |
| Kusilvak Census Area | 2,393 | 100.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% | United Utilities, Inc. (20%) |
| Dillingham Census Area | 1,884 | 100.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% | Nushagak Electric Telephone Cooperative (62%) |
| Lake and Peninsula Borough | 1,607 | 100.0% | 67.2% | 0.0% | GCI Communication Corp. (33%) |
| Hoonah-Angoon Census Area | 1,455 | 100.0% | 57.5% | 0.0% | Fibre Alaska (42%) |
| Denali Borough | 1,210 | 100.0% | 71.7% | 10.6% | Matanuska Telecom Association Inc. (100%) |
| Haines Borough | 1,210 | 100.0% | 25.9% | 58.9% | AP&T Wireless, Inc. (74%) |
| Bristol Bay Borough | 914 | 100.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% | Bristol Bay Telephone Cooperative Inc (100%) |
| Skagway Municipality | 516 | 100.0% | 8.1% | 61.6% | AP&T Wireless, Inc. (92%) |
| Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area | 3,779 | 99.4% | 100.0% | 0.0% | United Utilities, Inc. (47%) |
| Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area | 2,791 | 75.0% | 47.1% | 29.5% | AP&T Wireless, Inc. (53%) |
| Kenai Peninsula Borough | 33,561 | 66.4% | 90.1% | 0.2% | ALASKA COMMUNICATIONS (65%) |
| Nome Census Area | 3,463 | 65.0% | 100.0% | 0.0% | Fastwyre Broadband (78%) |
| Northwest Arctic Borough | 2,539 | 55.7% | 92.4% | 0.0% | OTZ Telephone (100%) |
| North Slope Borough | 2,300 | 38.4% | 8.1% | 61.3% | Arctic Slope Telephone Association Cooperative Inc (100%) |
| Matanuska-Susitna Borough | 43,339 | 36.4% | 28.1% | 29.0% | Matanuska Telecom Association Inc. (100%) |
| Aleutians West Census Area | 895 | 35.9% | 15.0% | 0.0% | GCI Communication Corp. (64%) |
| Aleutians East Borough | 1,035 | 28.9% | 11.3% | 0.0% | GCI Communication Corp. (89%) |
| Fairbanks North Star Borough | 32,467 | 24.7% | 83.3% | 9.9% | ALASKA COMMUNICATIONS (91%) |
| Anchorage Municipality | 79,280 | 13.8% | 82.4% | 4.9% | GCI Communication Corp. (98%) |
| Kodiak Island Borough | 4,069 | 11.5% | 88.1% | 0.0% | ALASKA COMMUNICATIONS (94%) |
| Wrangell City and Borough | 1,209 | 9.1% | 36.8% | 37.2% | GCI Communication Corp. (91%) |
| Chugach Census Area | 2,976 | 9.0% | 23.1% | 54.9% | GCI Communication Corp. (92%) |
| Juneau City and Borough | 9,613 | 7.3% | 88.8% | 0.2% | GCI Communication Corp. (100%) |
| Sitka City and Borough | 3,042 | 2.8% | 81.8% | 0.3% | GCI Communication Corp. (100%) |
| Ketchikan Gateway Borough | 4,864 | 1.6% | 1.4% | 98.0% | Ketchikan Public Utilities (100%) |
| Petersburg Borough | 1,592 | 0.7% | 28.1% | 48.2% | GCI Communication Corp. (100%) |
The column adds up. These 29 rows sum to 257,108 residential locations, and to 36.6% and 69.4%, which are the figures we publish for Alaska on the national study. The borough or census area rows and the state row are computed from the same blocks with the same definitions, so they cannot disagree. The build refuses to ship this page if they ever do.
Method, and what these numbers cannot tell you
Source: the FCC Broadband Data Collection, filing period D25, published July 21, 2026, reflecting service as of . Competition figures are computed across every census block in Alaska: a location counts toward the first figure when at most one company reports wireline service, meaning fiber, cable or copper, in its block. Fixed wireless and satellite are excluded from that count and stated separately elsewhere on this site.
It is a floor, not an estimate. Coverage is self reported by providers and is known to overstate, so every overstatement moves a location out of the at-most-one group and never into it. The real figure is this one or worse.
Reporting service in a block is not the same as being able to connect a given house. A company that reaches one address on a street counts for the whole block, which is why the fiber gap column can look better than any resident's experience.
The last column is reach, not market share. It names the wired operator reporting service across the largest share of the borough or census area's locations, with that share in brackets. It says nothing about how many people buy from them.
License
This page and its table are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Republish it, adapt it, use it commercially, in a newspaper or on a government page, provided you credit WhereFiber and link to this page. The underlying counts are facts from a public federal dataset and nobody can own them; the license covers this write-up and the arrangement of this table.
How to cite this
Horvath, F. (2026). Internet competition in every Alaska borough or census area: wireline provider counts by census block. WhereFiber. Retrieved from https://wherefiber.com/research/alaska-boroughs/
Want this for another state, or a cut we have not published? Write to contact@wherefiber.com and we will run it.
Related
- The national block level competition study, all 52 states and territories ranked
- Who can actually get gigabit internet in America, where Alaska ranks near the top
- Every provider reporting service in Alaska