Alascom history

Pacific Telecom got its start in 1903 in the small Washington coastal town of Ilwaco when J. A. Howerton's brother-in-law needed a way to contact his fishing scow on the waterfront.

Pacific Power also owned telephone companies based in Kalispell, Montana, and Lebanon, Oregon, both of which had been acquired in 1954 when the company merged with the Mountain States Power Company.

Three more companies were purchased in 1968, and five were added the following year.

By 1972 Telephone Utilities had obtained 22 subsidiaries that provided service to 60,000 customers in four states.

In 1973 Telephone Utilities was purchased by the Pacific Power & Light Company of Portland, Oregon.

In 1975 Blue Mountain Telephone, Inc., and Fossil Telephone Exchange were purchased.

In 1977, at the peak of Alaska's oil boom, Alascom provided equipment to monitor and control operations along the 800-mile Trans Alaska Pipeline.

In 1979, Pacific Power & Light Company (later known as PacifiCorp), thru its subsidiary Pacific Telecom, Inc., purchased RCA Alascom and it became known as Alascom, Inc.

In 1980 Telephone Utilities acquired the Greatland Telephone Company and the Sitka Telephone Company, based in Alaska.

With an eye toward further consolidation, the company selected Vancouver, Washington, as headquarters site for the new company, and in 1982 the two were officially joined under the name Pacific Telecom.

At the end of 1983, Pacific Telecom reported revenues of $341 million.

In October of 1984 the company announced that it would buy the Glacier State Telephone Company and the Juneau Douglas Telephone Company.

In 1985 Pacific Telecom laid its first underwater fiber-optic telecommunications cable when it installed a link to its telephone system in the San Juan Islands.

The company sold off its cable television and utility construction operations in 1987 and discontinued other activities.

In May of 1988 Pacific Telecom's long-pending legal action over the Alaskan long-distance market was resolved when Alascom was ordered to pay a $27.5 million settlement to its competitor.

In January of 1990 Pacific Telecom traded service areas with another cellular operator in an effort to assemble contiguous areas of coverage.

Cellular operations continued to grow during 1991, and Pacific Telecom increased its holdings in this field by one-third, adding two northern Michigan rural service areas (RSAs) to reach a total of 28 RSAs and six urban centers.

Ayers, ACS’s senior vice-president of marketing and sales, served in a variety of executive-level positions during an eight-year stay at Pacific Telecom that ended in 1995.

Wonnell, ACS’s general counsel and an executive vice-president, served as vice-president for legal, regulatory, and legislative affairs at Pacific Telecom until its merger with CenturyTel in 1997.

When Charles Robinson broached the idea of creating a statewide telecommunications company during a dinner conversation in 1998, he already had spent a lifetime working in Alaska’s telecommunications industry.

Robinson stayed on at Pacific Telecom until February 1999, serving as chief executive officer as the first steps were taken toward creating ACS.

Although ACS management failed in its bid to acquire Matanuska Telephone, there were numerous achievements to celebrate. Its next major move occurred in June 2000, when the company acquired Internet Alaska Inc., the second largest ISP in Alaska with more than 25,000 subscribers and $8 million in annual revenue.

By 2001, ACS employed 1,200 workers, operated 330,000 access lines, and served 75,000 cellular subscribers, 50,000 Internet customers, and more than 40,000 long-distance customers.

In May 2004, the company launched its CDMA wireless network, the first in the state, enabling it to begin offering broadband wireless data service to customers the next month.

“Alaska Communications Systems Hits Milestone,” Wireless News, January 9, 2005.

Acquisition note: The collection was presented to the archives by Hilary J. Hilscher in 2006.

The finding aid was rewritten and reformatted to this standardized form by Arlene Schmuland in 2011.