Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor was the Port of Whitman County’s fiber optics network. But years of study, planning and installing fiber has molded the Port into a state leader in fiber infrastructure.
“For 17 years we’ve been building fiber,” said Joe Poire, Port executive director.
The Port first started looking at fiber in 1996, mostly because of the set up of dial-up internet at the time.
“Dial-up internet was a big thing in 1996,” Poire noted.
One of the biggest problems with accessing the internet at the time was it required a long-distance phone call for most of the county. Because of how coverage was broken up when the original phone system was deregulated by the government, calling Pullman–where the internet hubs were–was the same as calling out of state.
Port commissioner John Love of Garfield was told by the phone company he should consider moving J.E. Love Co. if he wanted better internet service. A call from Endicott to Malden was routed through Benge to Spokane and back down into Whitman County because of the transmission directions among telephone exchanges.
“We were really in a unique, precarious situation (in 1996),” Poire said. With the exception of those already in Pullman, all port facilities had to make that long-distance call to access internet. And because of the sparse population and low capital, the big telephone companies weren’t going to be the ones to take the initiative to install improvements.
“We gotta take care of ourselves,” Poire said. He pointed out that since the days of dial-up, no big telecommunications company has put anything into Whitman County because there is not enough profit.
Poire noted this set up with rural business being left behind communication-wise was “an extremely disastrous situation for rural businesses in Whitman County.”
Rather than stand by and watch businesses shrivel up, the port worked on a solution.
“What good does it do to have a Port if all the communities are dead?” Poire said.
So in 1998 the Port began working with state legislators on a bill that would grant the Port authority to build telecommunications infrastructure which before had been contained to the private sector, companies that had kept their focus on big market and ignored rural ones. In 2000 they succeeded in getting RCW 53.08.370 passed and the Port of Whitman County started building fiber optics infrastructure.
Today, the Port has 150 miles of fiber running through two states, five counties and about a dozen communities. Fiber access is a given amenity at Port facilities along with water and sewer. This creates more than $1 million per year in revenue with 14 different companies leasing fiber. To reach this point $26 million was invested, which included a $12 million grant from the Department of Commerce in 2012 and four or five different avenues of funding.
The Port’s experience and success with fiber has drawn the attention of other Washington state ports. In May 2015 Poire gave a presentation at a Washington Public Ports Association meeting and was approached by other ports that were starting to look at fiber infrastructure. The next year a collection of ports started talking about and planning legislation that would provide more authority to install fiber. Now, in 2017, the ports are formalizing and working together to achieve their goals.
“We get more done together than we do alone,” Poire commented.
One step toward those goals is HB1702 which Rep. Mary Dye introduced in the current legislative session. The group is also exploring federal avenues, possibly opening currently stagnate funds from the Rural Utility Service which right now can only be used by private utilities. After 17 years of working with fiber, the port sees some legislative changes that could be made to make it easier for ports to put in the infrastructure.
The Port of Whitman County is entering into interlocal agreements with other ports to help them get that fiber infrastructure in place. Poire works with those ports, modeling what works and doesn’t to help those ports build their fiber infrastructure. While Poire has been working with the ports for a while, Port of Whitman County is now going to get reimbursed from the other ports for the staff time and expense put into the projects.
Although the other ports are all on the west side of the state, Poire and Port commissioners see the work as a benefit to Whitman County. At a recent Port board meeting there were concerns about “mission creep”; concerns that the Port of Whitman County had been just an advisory and consulting role before but is now being pressed into a leadership role which could detract from business at home. For now the port is keeping its scope of work to 90-day segments to help control that. After discussion, the port decided to go forward with other ports getting fiber expected to benefit Whitman County directly and indirectly.
One example is with the WSU Vancouver campus which is located in the Port of Ridgefield. Because of a lack of fiber optics, WSU Vancouver has to FedEx hard drives to Pullman to share data and research.
“Port infrastructure can solve that problem,” Poire said. He also sees any innovation and growth coming from that shared information as a boon to the ports.
“In the end, we’ve grown 400 percent in 16 years,” Poire noted.
Jana Mathia is a reporter at the Whitman County Gazette.
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