On an island in the Bering Sea 1,200 miles from Anchorage, Alaska, sits an abandoned house on an abandoned Navy base.
It kept paying a Fairbanks company to provide internet service while its owner served federal prison time for tax evasion.
The government kept paying Alaska’s largest telecom, GCI, even after it signed a settlement for alleged fraud related to the subsidy.
Now, most homes in the town near the western end of Alaska’s Aleutian Island chain are left abandoned and deteriorating.
About the publicly funded connections to demolished homes on Adak and other uses of internet subsidies in Alaska.
The buildings the FCC says Adak Eagle keeps wired for internet include duplexes, fourplexes and ranches where we found no sign of life.
Even the people who work there have stopped relying on the internet service that you pay for. »