Gervais Telephone to expand services

The company received $628,860 to provide high-speed Internet services to rural areas

GERVAIS — Those who live and work just west of Woodburn, along Butteville and River roads, will soon have access to high-speed Internet services.
 
Gervais Telephone was recently awarded a $628,860 grant and loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).
 
The money is a 50-50 split between grant money and loan money.
 
“This grant is about serving the underserved,” said Harry Lee Kwai, marketing manager for Gervais Telephone.
 
There are two parts to the project: one from Butteville Road to Broadacres Road, where the Butteville Fire Station sits, and the other will start at Concomly Road and end at Brooklake Road in Brooks.
 
According to Gervais Telephone President John Hoffman, the project will provide 60 homes and 27 businesses with fiber optic lines.
 
Those homes are currently being served with T1 copper lines, which allow Internet pages to download at 1.5 megabits per second (mb/s).
 
Once the fiber lines are in, it will go to 10 mb/s. The cost will also go down tremendously.
 
“There are some customers paying $300-$400 a month and we will be able to offer our broadband at $45 a month,” Hoffman said.
 
Hoffman said the Fiber-to-the-Home Council, a nonprofit association consisting of companies and organizations that deliver video, Internet and/or voice services over high-bandwidth, next-generation and direct fiber optic connections, has set a goal of providing 100 mb/s to every home by 2015.
 
“That’s a lofty goal,” Hoffman said. “It costs $100,000 per mile to build the system with fiber permits, engineering — everything.”
 
Kwai said moving to fiber “future-proofs” homes.
 
“Copper limits you, broadband doesn’t,” he said.
 
“Bandwidth is increasing so fast, fiber is the only thing that keeps up,” Hoffman said. “Fibers carry millions more bandwidth than copper, so it protects you for the future.”
 
T1 copper lines provide 1.5 mb/s, digital subscriber lines (DSL), which are also copper lines, provide 1.5 to 7 mb/s. Fiber optic lines go up to 1,000 mb/s.
 
“There’s only so much information copper lines can carry,” Kwai said.
 
Both Kwai and Hoffman said with so much video moving to high-definition, bandwidth is going to get used up pretty fast.
 
Gervais Telephone was notified on Jan. 25 that it received the ARRA funds, but just recently released the information. Hoffman expects work to begin this summer.
 
Some of the businesses that will now have high-speed Internet are Eldriege Elementary School, Salem Bible College and the Waconda and Broadacres fire stations.
 
“Now all of the Gervais School District will have access to high-speed Internet,” Kwai said. “That’s a good thing.”
 
Gervais Telephone has been providing service to the Mid-Willamette Valley since 1914.

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LC from Woodburn
3/18/2010 12:14:17 PM

Too bad Gervais Telephone cannot expand service to Woodburn so we can get out of the monopoly of Qwest and Willamette Broadband. I would much rather give my business to the local co-op. Many other small towns around us have access to similar co-ops but Woodburn does not.




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