The high-speed, high-performance cable will be continuously monitored and managed by dual Network Operations Control Centers in Alaska and the Lower 48, a security feature that no other telecom carrier in Alaska provides.

AKORN a $175 million investment and aims to advance Alaska's fiber optic connectivity with the rest of the world.

ACS in 2008 purchased Crest Communications Corp., owner and operator of the Northstar submarine fiber optic cable, one of three existing submarine fibers connecting Alaska to the Lower 48.

ACS now owns two of four cables connecting Alaska.

Applied Microsystems is a systems integration company, with business and government customers throughout the state, including the state of Alaska, municipality of Anchorage, University of Alaska and the Anchorage School District.

Applied Microsystems has developed the AMI eWorX Integrated Services Framework that consolidates and delivers applications from both within and outside the corporate firewall to end users though a single interface and security structure.

Contestants of the Big Idea contest submitted a proposal to ACS outlining how they would transform their businesses if they didn't have to worry about bandwidth constraints or costs.

A panel of judges consisting of local technology and business leaders chose the winner from the pool of entries submitted in April.

ACS President Liane Pelletier presented the award at a reception held at the Alutiq Center in Anchorage June 24.

"We took a courageous course to add bandwidth into Alaska, with the blessing of our board of directors to lay a fiber optic cable from the Cook Inlet to the coast of Oregon," said Pelletier. "We are gathered here for two reasons: to award the contest winner and to officially celebrate the opening of AKORN.

The first commercial traffic was added to the AKORN line April 1.

AKORN is capable of downloading 35 full-length movies per second.

"To give you an idea of what this means, the AKORN is 150 times faster than current Internet connectivity," said Applied Microsystems' Toole. "The new bandwidth will drive demand in Alaska for enterprise content management, document and records management, business process automation and virtual office services like data backup and disaster recovery. These services can be delivered from anywhere in the world when bandwidth is not an issue. This is great news for Alaska businesses, now we can export our business to the rest of world instead of importing business from the Lower 48."

Rob Stapleton can be reached at rob.stapleton@alaska

journal.com.