AT&T Alascom

AT&T Alascom has extensive telecommunications infrastructure in Alaska, including three satellites, undersea and terrestrial cables containing optical fiber, and numerous earth stations.

Unlike most of the United States, AT&T had no role in Alaskan telecommunications as a local or long distance telephone provider until the purchase of Alascom in 1995.

Alascom and General Communications, Inc. have been the two primary competitors for long-distance telephone service in Alaska since GCI's founding in 1979.

The company began in 1900 when the U.S. Congress authorized the U.S. Army Signal Corps to create the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System, or WAMCATS.

Alascom greatly built up the telecommunications infrastructure in the state during this time, due to RCA's major involvement in communications satellites.

Alascom (then owned by RCA) building in Unalaska in August 1972. As with much of rural Alaska in the 1970s, this building contained the community's only telephone at the time.