One way or another, broadband is coming

“It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”

Bill Coale, a senior account manager with Syringa Networks threw down a guarantee at Shoshone County Airport on Wednesday night as he discussed how his company will have fiber optic broadband laid to Kellogg later this year.

For months there has been speculation concerning Syringa Networks and how their services will be useful in the Silver Valley, Coale was able to answer some questions and provide a few details that had been missing.

Initially the plan was to go from Coeur d’Alene to Cataldo, but last night Coale said they will be working at getting to Kellogg.

One of the biggest issues that has people so interested in the services that Syringa offers is the concept of bringing high-speed/broadband internet to the local residents of Shoshone County, but there is a catch for this to happen.

“We don’t do residential services,” Coale said, “we only do business. Now that’s not saying we can’t provide our business to the local providers who can then turn around and sell it to residents though.”

There is still no set dollar amount on what the cost of getting the service to Kellogg will be, but it sounds like Syringa will be going through the Silver Valley no matter what.

In previous meetings, Coale has said that the bigger local companies have to be involved to make this a possibility.

“We would need to see interest from the hospital, the schools, Silver Mountain, Dave Smith, the local mines, you know the elephants of the area,” Coale had said.

The company’s current plan I-90 to Missoula, from there they would plan to go south into South-Eastern Idaho to connect their network.

"As soon as the weather allows, we will begin construction between Coeur d'Alene and Cataldo," Syringa account executive Valerie Cramer said. "Those plans are already set and ready. But our plan is to get to Montana, so people will see us working on I-90 this summer."

One of the biggest hurdles that needed to be jumped is the setting up of a central office and access point (or more popularly referred to as a hub), as well as the heavy cost for setting up such a location.

These hubs are where the installation and use of the fiber optic lines gets tricky and expensive.

“These buildings must be bought,” Coale said in a previous meeting, “once you get the equipment inside of them you don’t want to move it. The equipment for the hub cost $5-6 million, which doesn’t include the building.”

At this time there is no plans for setting up a hub in Kellogg, but Coale plans on continuing to talk to the businesses locally and drum up some business.

“We know we are going to need to set up central office,” Coale said. “We don’t know exactly where that is going to be, but we’re coming.”