Port manager plans tour to launch broadband project

In the next two weeks, nine town councils will be asked to give the Port of Whitman County non-exclusive franchise rights to extend fiber optic cables through their towns.

Executive Director Joe Poire said the franchise agreements will allow the port to install fiber optic cable that will bring high-speed broadband internet services throughout the Palouse.

Port Director Joe Poire holds up a section of fiber optic cable.

Poire said bringing the fiber optic connection to Whitman County could potentially be as beneficial to commerce here as development of Snake River dams in the 1960s.

“There’d be no shipping on the river if the port didn’t put 40 years of work into it and the feds didn’t put in the dams,” he said.

Poire said cable service is a necessary component for bringing in companies that will allow developement or recruitment of high-tech industries.

“With my background in the cable and cell phone industries, I can tell you that nobody goes and looks at a place that doesn’t have anything they can use as a starting point,” he said. “This fiber will give them a place to start.”

Funded by an $11.8 million grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the port is laying cable in the right-of-ways along state highways and railroads in Whitman and Spokane counties.

The port’s hope is that an installed fiber optic network will attract private providers that could hook up rural homes and businesses with high-speed service.

“We’re putting in a road,” he said. “The trucking company, or the UPS guy is going to bring the box to your house.”

Stretches of the cable will be run to Colfax, Colton, Oakesdale, Albion, Garfield, Palouse, Rosalia, Tekoa and Uniontown and will be linked first to “anchor institutions” like libraries and medical centers.

Many town officials are uncertain, but intrigued, by what the broadband will actually provide their communities.

“I’m really kind of curious to see what this will all mean for us,” said Palouse Mayor Michael Echanove. “How does it all play into how we are currently serviced, and what will it bring to us?”

The high-speed fiber could make it possible for internet providers to link up towns with the infrastructure necessary to bring high-tech companies to smaller towns.

“It provides opportunity. It provides competition and service,” said Poire. All those things make capitalism work.”

The first report by Washington’s newly-formed Broadband Office released Dec. 28 showed a dearth of fast broadband access for rural areas of the state.

The broadband office was created out of a federal program to assess the nation’s broadband infrastructure and operates under Washington’s Department of Information Services.

In the report, the office suggested efforts by the state to speed installation of broadband infrastructure and to assist telecommunications companies in bringing service to homes would be key to driving the economies of rural Washington.

Nineteen percent of the state, mostly rural areas like Whitman County, can only get broadband service from one provider, while nine percent of the state has no access to broadband.

Increased bandwidth installed in the Methow Valley in north central Washington earlier this decade brought in a number of businesses from the Puget Sound area, according to Angela Wu, broadband policy and programs director for the state Department of Information Services.

“It really created an entirely new way for companies to do business in the rural areas a lot of people prefer to live in,” said Wu.

The port’s leg is part of a Northwest Open Access Network project to expand broadband to rural Washington state. NOANet, based in Tacoma, received $135 million in federal stimulus funding this year.

The overall project will place fiber optic cable from Spokane to Walla Walla through Lewiston. Stimulus timelines require the project be completed in the next two years.

Initially, the fiber will be used to connect medical clinics and libraries to high-speed internet.

Hospital and library officials were excited about the greater range of programs a wider bandwidth will provide.

“It’s a huge increase in speed over what we have now,” said Jim Heilsberg, Chief Financial officer of Whitman Hospital and Medical Center. “I’m excited about it.”

Kristie Kirkpatrick, director of the Whitman County Rural Library District, said patrons will be able to access a wide variety of internet databases and state or nationwide libraries with the connection.

The Library of Congress or library catalogs from around the state could be accessed with the click of a mouse, she said.

Kirkpatrick was also excited about the chance to broaden distance education programs through the library’s connection.

“For Whitman County, especially, I think expanding distance education is perfect,” said Kirkpatrick. “We’re such a spread out county, and I think it’s really important to give everybody as much access to those programs as they can use.”

Laying of the fiber optic cable is expected to be done this summer. Poire made his first tour stop in Colfax Monday night. He presented council members with a copy of the franchise agreement which was negotiated between Pullman and the port.

Council members plan to check out the Pullman agreement before voting on approval of the franchise at Colfax.

The buried cable will arrive in Colfax along the South Palouse River road. Poire said the cable link will be extended from Pullman via Albion. After entering town along the South Palouse River Road it will be moved to poles for distribution to the library on Main and the hospital on the south hill.

Poire explained the port plan calls for installation of “dark” cable which will be available to companies to lease. The port will receive lease payments from the firms that use the fiber, and the state will receive leasehold tax revenue.