Rural Alaskans are getting ready to lose Internet access, long distance phone service--or both--sometime this week when a so-called zombie satellite that wandered off course makes its way into Alaskan air space.
"Almost every single person out in rural Alaska uses one of those services somehow," said General Communications Inc. (GCI) spokesman David Morris, speaking to the Anchorage Daily News. GCI, while it still has a signal, has been airing radio ads, posting fliers and hopes to send text messages to cell phone customers that warn trouble's on the way for about 100 communities in Western and Northern Alaska.
The outages should start Wednesday and last to Saturday in blocks of time that can be as little as 90 minutes or as long as 5.5 hours.
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