Deadhorse Airport lease keeps Prudhoe Bay communications online
ASTAC’s five-year lease at Deadhorse Airport will keep a 45,000-square-foot telecom site in place for Prudhoe Bay, where airport-backed connectivity supports crews, medevac, and daily operations.
The Arctic Slope Telephone Association Cooperative kept a critical communications foothold in place at Deadhorse Airport with a five-year lease extension that covered about 45,000 square feet and carried annual rent of $12,825. The site was more than a line item on airport land records. It supported the phone, internet, and network equipment that helped keep Prudhoe Bay and the surrounding North Slope connected.
The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities said the lease, ADA-72622, allowed non-aeronautical use for telecommunications service operations. The permitted facilities included a telephone office, warm storage for equipment and supplies, vehicle parking, a telecommunications tower, satellite dishes, and related supporting structures. In a place where weather, distance, and limited redundancy shaped every service decision, that mix of facilities mattered for far more than convenience.
Deadhorse Airport sat about 5 miles south of Prudhoe Bay and roughly 370 to 380 air miles north of Fairbanks, depending on the department document. DOT described the airport as a key regional aviation hub with daily freight and passenger flights to Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Utqiagvik, along with commercial fixed-wing and helicopter service that supported oilfield work, Trans-Alaska Pipeline System logistics, and medevac links. That made airport property a practical base for communications infrastructure that had to stay close to the region’s central transport node.
ASTAC said it had served the North Slope since 1981 and operated in a roadless Arctic service area of more than 90,000 square miles, larger than 40 states. The cooperative said 91% of North Slope residences and businesses were connected to its fiber network as of Jan. 11, 2024, a level of buildout that explained why a lease renewal at Deadhorse could affect daily life well beyond the airport fence. ASTAC also listed satellite installation and operations, tower climbing, and cell-on-wheels support among its business services.
The importance of that backup was underscored by DOT’s own note that all telephone cables in the Deadhorse area were underground, a reminder that Arctic communications depended on infrastructure that was both specialized and vulnerable. A separate public notice also showed ASTAC holding another airport lease, ADA-71988, for 71,473 square feet at $20,369.81 a year, reinforcing the cooperative’s long-standing presence at Deadhorse.
A January 2025 internet outage tied to a subsea fiber break near Prudhoe Bay showed how quickly a major link could go down and how long repairs could take. Against that backdrop, the Deadhorse Airport lease was not routine property paperwork. It was part of the backbone that kept workers, airlines, emergency responders, and businesses talking across the North Slope.
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