White Alice Communications System The White Alice Communications System ( WACS ) was a United States Air Force telecommunication network constructed in Alaska during the Cold War . It used tropospheric scatter for over - the - horizon links and microwave relay for shorter line - of - sight links . Sites were characterized by large parabolic , tropospheric scatter antennas as well as smaller microwave dishes for point to point links . The system connected remote Air Force sites in Alaska , such as Aircraft Control and Warning ( AC & W ) , Distant Early Warning Line ( DEW Line ) and Ballistic Missile Early Warning System ( BMEWS ) , to command and control facilities and in some cases it was used for civilian phone calls . The system was advanced for its time , but became obsolete within 20 years following the advent of satellite communications . Historical perspective . White Alice was conceived in the 1950s when Alaska had only basic telephone communication systems . For example , prior to White Alice only one phone call at a time could be placed from Nome to Fairbanks . Communication improved after White Alice was installed , but even in the mid 1960s an Anchorage resident had to go to one location downtown to place a call to the lower 48 . The Air Force built the White Alice Communications System with numerous support facilities around the state to provide reliable communications to far - flung , isolated , and often rugged locales . Construction began in 1955 and the system was dedicated in 1958 . In the end , 71 systems were installed throughout Alaska . White Alice was designed by Western Electric , and civilian contractors maintained it . In 1976 , the WACS was leased to RCA Alascom . By the end of the 1970s , most of the system was deactivated . In the 1950s the Air Force used two word code names and White Alice was the code name selected for the project . It is fairly certain that White was used to indicate the snowy Arctic sites that the system would serve . However , it is unclear where the term Alice originated . Some sources suggest that Alice is an acronym for ALaska Integrated Communications Enterprise . Other sources suggest that the system would have been named Alice White had there not been an actress with that name at the time . Thus it was reversed to White Alice . It is also possible that the code name White Alice was selected for no particular reason . Construction . The United States Army Corps of Engineers ( USACE ) , Alaska district surveyed and selected each one of the original sites . It also constructed 11 of the original 31 sites . The selection process required that survey teams test the propagation path by setting up communication towers at each remote site during winter months . Some of the sites were easily accessible , but most of the sites were far from civilization on remote mountain peaks . 14 tons of equipment were taken by dogsled or helicopter to survey the sites . Construction was extremely expensive , with initial estimates around $ 30 million , but the first phase cost over $ 110 million . Project Stretchout drove costs over $ 300 million . Part of this expense was due to Western Electric ' s underestimate of maintenance requirements . They initially estimated that a single site would require six people and one 25 kW generator . However , each site required 20 people and 120 kW to 180 kW of electrical power to operate . In remote areas , an airfield was constructed to deliver supplies to the sites . Since electricity was not available at the sites , diesel generators and fuel tanks had to be placed , and quarters for the technicians were also required . Mountain top sites had an upper camp with the electronic equipment and a lower camp with support facilities . These were sometimes connected by a tram system . In addition to the support equipment , a typical White Alice repeater site consisted of four tropospheric dishes , grouped in pairs of two facing opposite directions to receive and transmit information from adjacent sites . Operation . The tropospheric scatter system operated around 900 MHz , and utilized both space diversity and frequency diversity , multiplexing a maximum of 132 simultaneous voice channel s . The tropospheric hops used pairs of or parabolic , billboard like reflectors pointed at a low angle into the horizon . The radio waves were scattered by the tropopause , returning to Earth beyond the horizon , allowing communication between stations hundreds of kilometers apart . Having two antennas allowed for space diversity , meaning that if tropospheric conditions degrade on one path the second path might still be clear and communications would not be disrupted . For frequency diversity , each antenna transmitted two separate frequencies . Using both frequency and space diversity was called quad diversity . System power output for most shots was 10 $ 4 and used antennas . Longer shots used antennas with 50 kW and shorter shots used 1 kW and , round parabolic dishes . The end of White Alice . After 1970 , WACS was transferred from Air Force control to RCA Alascom and served civilian use until the late 1970s , when it was superseded by satellite communication earth stations . The last tropospheric link , from Boswell Bay to Neklasson Lake , was used until January 1985 to connect Middleton Island to the network . Vandalism , unsafe conditions and environmental concerns caused the Department of Defense ( DOD ) to remove physical structures at the sites between the late 1980s to the early 2000s . Several former White Alice sites and collocated facilities became contaminated sites managed by Alaska ' s Department of Environmental Conservation - Contaminated Sites Program and DOD Cleanup programs sites because of PCB usage and fuel leakage from storage tanks . It is likely the cost to clean up some of the sites far exceeded the cost of construction .