Risking Invisibility: Smartphones in Alaska
Fun fact, the state of Alaska isn’t covered under some national plans. This is the case with my carrier, T-Mobile. As a consequence, one of my most used tools is rendered almost completely useless, clocking in at a measly .14 Megabits per second. As a reference, this is almost 3 times faster than dialup, a technology that lost its market share in 2004 and effectively died shortly after. The consequence of roaming makes a device that is usually an invisible multitool a mere shell of its former self. Being able to check the weather, look up a quick fact that came up in conversation, or navigate to the restaurant that friends are waiting at quickly became an impossible task. This also raises the question, even with an Alaskan carrier, how precarious is our access to the rest of the world?
Almost every device connects to a network of devices much bigger than themselves, and in many cases, they send information far away to massive data centers. For example, if I google “Who won the world series in 2016,” It takes google 1.20 seconds to serve me my results. This may be due to Alaska’s position far away from the mainland U.S. and our severe lack of undersea cables to allow for more bandwidth and redundancy. To illustrate this, it helps to compare to another, possibly more remote state, Hawaii. Hawaii has access to 14 undersea cables, while Alaska only has four, with a fifth in the arctic circle that is still currently being built. This creates more of a problem when those four cables are owned by two companies, Alaska Communication Systems and General Communication Incorporated, also known as ACS and GCI. GCI is notorious in Alaska for its data buckets, overage fees, and “1 GIG” internet that is actually closer to 130mbps (and costs $175 a month). These telecommunication companies also provide Alaskans with cell service, but this isn’t without its issues either.
With the sheer size of the state, issues with providing coverage exist because no matter how many towers are built, many citizens are still subjected to spotty coverage. As an example, to the left is a map with locations of cell towers within the state. To help visualize the massive dead zones within the state, I colored areas outside the effective range of the towers red. This is a generous estimate since 45 miles is the upper limit that a user can connect to a tower. Sadly, the earth isn’t flat, and Alaska has mountains. A lot of them. This means that the red area is likely much larger. There is one more little issue that ties the previous two together, latency. To reach Alaska’s closest neighbor, Washington it takes about 45ms. Using my google search for the World Series as an example, doing a traceroute takes 11 hops to reach Google, and most likely 11 hops back to tell me it was the Cubs that won in 2016. Also, while examining the IP addresses of the route, it was interesting to see that the information from a cell phone took a trip around the entire United States before reaching Google’s server. This is probably because the cell phone we tested on is an AT&T device and it stayed within its network until it reached Google. With each new modem, router, and server involved another point of failure is added.
Even in 1999, a researcher at AT&T, Andrew Odlyzko, stated that when the amount of devices rises, the complexity of the entire system rises as well. Alaska, with many of its residents living off the beaten path, definitely requires a complex system to offer these people ubiquitous computing systems. One consequence of this is that these systems may not always work invisibly, and when a device like a smartphone, GPS, or apple watch loses its connectivity it is rendered almost completely useless. Even offline apps and games sometimes require a connection to the internet for verification purposes.
Transitioning from city life back to Alaska, it is a strange adjustment period to cope with not having immediate access to the internet 24/7. I myself may have taken the device I rely on the most, my smartphone, for granted. This could mean the problem might not lie in the sparse coverage, precarious connection to the world outside this state, or the delay in which Alaskans get this information. Maybe the problem lies with me.
So, as a designer, maybe looking at the bigger issue isn’t always the solution. Instead of proposing new towers, underwater cables, or satellites, the solution can be as simple as stepping away. In a paper titled Heuristic Evaluation of Persuasive Health Technologies, the first two heuristics state that pervasive technologies should be able to integrate into one’s daily life and routine, and shouldn’t irritate the user even when used regularly over a long period of time. While these heuristics were being applied to health devices, they also seem to apply to the current situation concerning smartphones in Alaska. With the repeated loss of connection and slow speeds, my smartphone isn’t the seamless technology that it once was. In order to mitigate this, it’s as simple as taking time away from it and reducing my personal dependence on it. With access to music still, this transition hasn’t been too difficult.
When technology does work though, it’s almost magic. Being able to make a facetime call to family from a remote village only accessible by airplane, snowmobile, or dogsled is no small feat. It highlights both the spirit of ingenuity and our need for interaction. Perfect, seamless connectivity doesn’t seem to be a concern to many long term residents either. Some Alaskans prefer to live off the grid and resent the idea of being surrounded by devices. For these people, the current level of functionality is more than enough. As I stated before, maybe the issue isn’t looking into how I can change Alaska, but how I can change myself. Besides, I suppose you don’t reception 24/7 when you can experience views like this…
Sources:
An interesting short guide to how the internet evolved, from ARPANET to where we are today.
https://qz.com/1705375/a-complete-guide-to-the-evolution-of-the-internet/
Original source for the dial-up graph I used. https://theatlas.com/charts/Sylg5ndo4
An article on how certain factors affect the effective range of a cell phone.
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/far-can-cell-tower-cellphone-pick-up-signal-32124.html
A very convenient map that lists all the cell towers in your area. It was the best one I could find.
https://www.scadacore.com/tools/rf-path/cell-tower-map-united-states/
Heuristic Evaluation of Persuasive Health Technologies. https://terpconnect.umd.edu/~choe/download/IHI-10-Kientz.pdf
Interactive map of all the submarine cables around the world.
https://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/
Paper that uses the deployment of a pervasive computing system at a hospital as a case study.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266281844_Deploying_Pervasive_Technologies
21-year-old paper that takes a cautious approach to information appliances, despite its age, it raises concerns that are still very relevant today.
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/visible.problems.pdf
