Connecting communities
New fiber to bring wealth of broadband opportunities to Northwest Montana
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The want and need for broadband Internet is at an all-time high; that’s no secret. With more and more consumers using the Web to video chat, stream movies and operate small businesses, Ronan Telephone Company is taking strides to increase broadband opportunities while lowering costs for customers.
The Montana West fiber optic project is part of a program called the Broadband Technology Opportunity Program, which will use $13 million in federal stimulus money to expand fiber optic lines throughout the Mission Valley and much of Northwest Montana.
The fiber will help anchor institutions such as schools, colleges, hospitals, state, local and tribal governments increase their options and capabilities online. Currently RTC is working with St. Luke Community Hospital in Ronan on telemedicine services, which would benefit long-distance patients and their doctors.
“What the problem is, we have to buy wholesale Internet services, which makes it very expensive, with very little competition,” Ronan Telephone Company CEO Jay Preston said. "So the BTOP program was funded to find the middle mile fiber optic infrastructure to underserved areas. The idea is to have companies lower this discrepancy in wholesale service and to help areas that are underserved, and the lower economic areas.”
The project will install 315 miles of new fiber stretching from Missoula to the Flathead Valley, serving communities of Arlee, St. Ignatius, Charlo, Ronan, Pablo, Polson, Hot Springs, Elmo, Dayton, Rollins, Lakeside and Somers. Additional fiber will be installed from Cut Bank to Browning, serving Saint Mary, Babb, East Glacier and Heart Butte on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.
According to Preston, they began the project in Sept. 2010, and must have the project completed by September 2013. Once complete, there will be a five-year operations period until September 2018, when RTC will take over the project.
The project is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and will help to eliminate the digital divide, which is when underserved areas have either no service, or it’s considerably more expensive than urban areas.
“The concept of underserved is, if broadband is available here and costs $50 a month, what you receive is 700 kilobits to 1.5 kilobits,” Preston said. “Which is oftentimes fairly typical for rural areas outside town.”
Preston added that urban areas are now paying considerably less, between $20 to 30 a month, for 5,000 to 10,000 kilobits. Today, price competition in Montana is generally limited to Billings and Missoula, due to the lack of multiple competitors.
Increasing the competition in the fiber optic market usually decreases the price to consumers, according to Preston.
“There’s a good reason it exists,” Preston said. “It’s costly to provide these services in sparsely populated areas. Many rural areas have little competition in the middle mile service. It’s true nationally, and it’s true here.”
Preston said urban areas such as Seattle, Wash., have lowered their costs to $25 per megabit, where some rural areas in Montana can cost up to $300 a megabit for the combination of the middle and last mile. Those prices play a big factor for businesses when deciding where to locate their business, Preston said.
“The high price for wholesale service is why we began this program,” Preston said. “Broadband is becoming a critical component to operate.”
As Montana West places the fiber along the route, they are strategically placing “vaults,” or spools of extra fiber they can tap into if needed in the future. They’ve had a few issues early on laying fiber around the Evaro area, as the ground is very rocky, resulting in broken equipment and unexpected delays. They’ve also had setbacks because of meeting legal requirements for permits, Preston said.
If that wasn’t enough, the crew is also in a race against Mother Nature, working hard to get as much complete as possible before winter shuts the operation down for the season.
“The region’s not called the Rocky Mountains for nothing,” Preston said with a smile. “The rocky areas are hard on the equipment — time-consuming and expensive.”
“We’re thinking ahead as we go along,” he added.
As the largest project RTC has ever tried in a short amount of time, the pressure is on to complete the project by their September 2018 deadline. So far, they have placed 31 miles of fiber, with approximately 284 miles left to go.
“It’s a very ambitious project for us,” Preston said.
