“The Tribal Broadband Connectivity program has awarded $48 million across 36 projects in Alaska alone,” he says.

Even with these opportunities, finding and retaining skilled staffing continues as a key obstacle for contractors in Alaska. “Every single industry event you go to there’s a training track or discussion panel on workforce development,” he says. “The problem is we export more young talent than we import.”

Despite the tempered short-term outlook, Storter says he expects the upswing of the cycle to return.

“I don’t see it stopping anytime soon. It seems like there’s been continual opportunity as long as I’ve lived up here,” he says. “Every time I say, ‘This is a flash in the pan,’ in four years there’s some new, shiny driver pushing it along again.”