On This Nearly Deserted Alaska Island, You Pay to Keep Hundreds of Empty Buildings Wired for Internet

On This Nearly Deserted Alaska Island, You Pay to Keep Hundreds of Empty Buildings Wired for Internet U.S. phone customers pay more than $340,000 a year for an Anchorage company to keep homes and buildings on Alaska’s Adak Island wired for obsolete internet service. All but a few of them sit empty. by Kyle Hopkins, Anchorage Daily News Co-published with Anchorage Daily News July 20, 2026, 5:00 am https://www.propublica.org/article/adak-island-alaska-internet-subsidy-fcc?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=secondary On this nearly deserted Alaska island, you are paying to keep hundreds of empty buildings wired for internet. Adak Island is home to a couple dozen people, yet hundreds of thousands of dollars in public subsidies go to funding internet services in a place filled with abandoned buildings. As part of his investigation into why a telecom company keeps these buildings wired for obsolete internet service, Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica reporter Kyle Hopkins knocked on every door and talked to every person he could find to see whether anyone used the service. The president of the telecom company did not respond to our questions despite multiple requests. Before hanging up on our first call, he did say this: that he is playing by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission’s subsidy program, and if we had questions, we should ask the agency. We did, and the FCC never responded. Watch below to see what he learned. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wyNepe_JtXQ