Gigabit work continues

Whitehall is one step closer to becoming a Gigabit Community.

Earlier this month, local company TeleSystem Services (TSS) continued their work on First Street for a project that would provide speeds of 1000 megabits per second, about 250 times faster than the typical local Internet connection.

Lee Good of TSS said they were slotting the street and putting in a fiber duct to cross the street from the North Side of First Street where the fiber runs, to the South Side of First Street` to serve homes and businesses on that side of the street. He said they are trying to get the street crossings completed before the streets are chip sealed.

Late last year, Good said the Gigabit Internet would be used to feed the TSS Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) experiment approved by the Town Council.

Good is hopeful to have the fiber installed and operational by the end of September.

Good stressed the importance of the project for Whitehall and can help both businesses and residents.

"Fiber optics is the 'state of the art' in Internet delivery. It is essentially 'future proof' as the speeds can be increased for the future by simply changing the equipment on both ends of the fiber," he said. "We are actually running an individual fiber to each user along First Street from the source at the Old Cheese Factory building. We will be able to reach a few homes on Second Street as well. Fiber is an extremely fast and reliable service and the only real problems are backhoes."

Good added fiber is also being used to drive the old Cable TV system to deliver very high speed Internet to those places that can't be reached by fiber yet.

"We have numerous business and residential customers using the cable Internet at the present time and we are already serving several subdivisions. If you have an old TV cable line to your house and we have service in your area we can hook you up to fast Internet for minimal cost," he said.

Good also believes that the project is important for the Town of Whitehall, so they can continue to be a part of the national telecommunications infrastructure and equal to other communities.

"The purpose of the First Street project was to determine the costs per block of doing it ourselves and with local contractors. We have had several manufactures that are interested in our 'plug and play' concept (no fiber splicing), and they have sent people out to help develop and install parts of the system," he said.

Looking to the future, Good said the FTTH system also has some major economic development possibilities as well.

"We have already had several inquiries as to apartments, houses, or office locations where the fiber will be available. It has been demonstrated in Kansas City and other Google fiber sites that it tends to attract the 'Techies' and companies that use a lot of Internet as part of their business. (TSS) is wanting to make Whitehall a Montana Gigait Community as quickly as we can," he said.

"We have the Gigabit Internet capability here already; now to deliver it to the fiber users as quickly as possible. We aren't forgetting the rural areas either. We are looking at connecting small concentrated groups of rural houses together by fiber in the near future."