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Uniontown home to new high-speed Internet service [Moscow-Pullman Daily News, Moscow, Idaho](Moscow-Pullman Daily News (ID) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 04--High-speed Internet service is now available in Uniontown thanks to a new pilot program by First Step Internet. First Step Internet currently provides wireless and cable Internet to most of Latah and Whitman counties, with services as far as Bovill and Rosalia. The pilot program in Uniontown, however, will be the first fiber-to-the-home project on the Palouse, First Step Internet owner Kevin Owen said. "We're super excited about it," Owen said. As the name implies, the process of installing fiber to the home means residences are not connected to typical copper or coaxial lines. First Step Internet offers to install a router that residents can connect to wirelessly or with a cable. It allows greater bandwidth and faster Internet speeds at a relatively reasonable rate, Owen said. First Step Internet, for example, now offers those residents 100 megabytes-per-second of speed for $50 a month. A press release from the company said in the future people can upgrade to reach 1 GB of speed per second. Uniontown was picked for the project because it already had access to an electrical conduit in the ground and to fiber that was close by, Owen said. The service will be offered to homeowners at the recently-developed Rolling Hills subdivision on the south end of the city. The new development in Uniontown was also ideal because it gave them a chance to work with the developers and start the project while the homes were being planned. "The time to talk about what you're going to do for services is in the planning stages," he said. Martin Erkela, general manager of Frontier in the Pullman and Moscow region, said more and more cities are using this technology. However, it is much more cost effective for Internet providers to install it in new developments, or greenfields, than it is to install in established areas of town. Since construction crews are already installing utilities in those places, he said, it is much simpler and cheaper for a provider to install a fiber line. "It's something we're slowly evolving to, but mostly in greenfields," he said. Frontier offers fiber to the home with a service called FiOS, but only around the Puget Sound and in Portland. Erkela said the idea behind installing fiber to the home is great, but he warns higher megabytes per second is not always necessary. Having up to 100 mbps can be beneficial, especially if a family likes to stream movies and play video games at the same time, but it far exceeds the needs of an average customer. He said around 15 mbps is "typically plenty fast enough" for most customers. He also said typical copper cables now are able to run 100 mbps if necessary. However, with the popularity of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, it is easy to see why installing fiber to the home is appealing. Both Owen and Erkela said they are open to bringing more of this technology to the Palouse. Owen said First Step Internet first wants to see how well it is received in Uniontown before moving forward. "We certainly would like to talk with other communities in the region about what we've done and how it can be done," Owen said Anthony Kuipers can be reached at (208) 883-4630, or by email to [email protected]. ___ (c)2014 the Moscow-Pullman Daily News (Moscow, Idaho) Visit the Moscow-Pullman Daily News (Moscow, Idaho) at www.dnews.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |