Fiber project, Blackfoot called 'great fit'
SANDPOINT — In the effort to establish a public-private fiber optics network in Bonner County, it’s important to find a service provider that fits the community.
Project organizers U.S. MetroNets and Bonner County Economic Development Corporation believe they’ve found such a business in Blackfoot. A Missoula, Mont.-based telecommunications business projected to serve as service provider for the fiber network, Blackfoot representatives introduced the business to community officials at a workshop Wednesday evening.
“We’ve been told we’re reliable, a good corporate citizen and trustworthy,” said Joel Block, Blackfoot
vice president of customer operations and marketing. “I can’t think of a better combination than that.”
A company with a 60-year history, Blackfoot has grown to provide voice and data service to a large chunk of western Montana, with a presence in more than 20 of the state’s towns as well as Powell, Idaho. The company also produces telecommunications software with a programming branch called TeleSphere Software. Finally, the company recently acquired web-hosting company Modwest to further expand its services.
According to project organizers, Blackfoot is a great fit for the project in a number of ways. For one thing, the business is based a mere three hours away, solving some of the logistical problems that made Eastern-based companies uneasy. Scott Crowley of U.S. MetroNets followed up by saying that Blackfoot is an ideally-sized company, big enough to provide quality service but not so big that it would ignore rural business.
“We could call this a Goldilocks project,” Crowley said. “It’s just the right size.”
According to Block, Blackfoot maintains an 80-percent customer approval rating among its current user base. While attending community officials were impressed by those numbers, they also wanted to know what accounted for the 20-percent disapproval. Block replied that it was mostly users wanting faster Internet connections. Fiber optics connections can offer Internet packages ranging from several megabytes per second to a gigabyte or more per second in download speeds. However, lower-end residential service can still get overloaded when several family members make data demands at once.
City representatives also wanted assurances that there would be limited risk to local governments in the event that Blackfoot proved financially unstable. Planners replied that such an event would be unlikely, saying the company was many times more secure than what was required for the project.