[walrus01]

ACS and GCI have recently spent a great deal of (partly subsidized) money to build high capacity point to point microwave to reach a number of fly-in type communities:

https://www.adn.com/business-economy/2017/03/19/with-federal...

https://www.adn.com/features/business-economy/2017/03/18/for...

The goal for these is to build network bridges to alaskan terrestrial fiber, getting to Fairbanks and/or Anchorage, from where connections are possible into Alaska's subsea fiber cables to WA state and the Seattle area.

Implemented properly this can be significantly faster than satellite, bringing a 1 to 2 Gbps full duplex connection to each town with licensed microwave bands. From the perspective of ACS and GCI and similar operators, it can pay for itself pretty quickly because they can stop paying monthly-recurring geostationary satellite transponder kHz leases.