Use of, and limits to telecommunications supporting Spill Response in the Arctic

The ability to exchange critical information across a broad spectrum of users is the success of a response. Communicating on the North Slope of Alaska is a technical challenge. One of the most critical elements supporting any Contingency Response is telecommunications (telecom). Telecom, as an issue rears its head after almost every exercise or real world response situation. It never seems to matter what type of event the response is supporting, the location of the response or weather that is occurring. Telecom continues to come up as a 'lessons learned'. Recent technological advances (Last 15–20 Years) have resolved some older, yet lingering issues, (e.g. SATCOM, Fiber Optics, Digitization, and the Internet). That said, trying to communicate over an area covering tens-of-thousands of square miles in some of the harshest, most remote regions on the planet is at the very least - demanding. Technically, in many regions, telecom issues can be fairly easy to resolve. In the Arctic, several factors as well as ...