YKHC and GCI have just completed a four month project to substantially increase the bandwidth for all village clinics, SRCs, and YKDRH.

• 15 villages bandwidth were doubled from 5 to 10Mbs (Megabits per second).
• 26 were tripled from 5 to 15 Mbs
• Five SRCs were doubled from 15 to 30Mbps
• YKDRH was increased from 80 to 150Mbs.

For reference, most residential homes receive 4-6Mbps. Unlike residential internet, YKHC has dedicated service — which means that our bandwidth speeds are guaranteed. For example, you may have experienced slowness on a Friday night when many people are streaming movies. That’s because bandwidth across the community or delta becomes congested. Whereas, other businesses and residents compete for bandwidth, often slowing everyone down, on YKHC’s dedicated circuit you compete for bandwidth with your coworkers. YKHC has over 1,000 people who connect to the internet each day, and even with the increase our internet could still become congested by activity that is not related to work.

The cost for internet service is well over a million dollars per month. Most of that cost is paid by the Universal Service Administrative Company, or USAC. You contribute to that funding through a small fee collected through every phone bill you pay. The rules for receiving this funding state that it can be withdrawn or reduced if the internet access is used for purposes other than those related to patient care.  The upgrade was not intended to enhance personal use of social media, such use could have a negative impact on our business capabilities.  Surf responsibly.