Broadband

Retail Service Providers

All of the Retail Service Providers (RSP) make the network a success. By the District’s commitment to keep the network as open access the competitive forces should keep consumer costs in check. The RSP will work in concert with the consumer to address their needs and develop products that add value to their service. The District is grateful to the RSPs who have been, are, and will be partners on our Community Network System.

Community Network System is now on Facebook 

We plan on providing the latest news about our ARRA/BTOP Fiber-to-the-Premise project and much more.  Please check us out!

The Next Generation of Light and Power

Our new brochure can be viewed at Axmag.  Please take a look and then use your back button to return to our site.  Broadband Fiber to the Premise Brochure

What are your needs? Telecommuting ? Distance Learning ? Video Conferencing ? Health Care Services ? Access to Worldwide Markets. The Community Network System will provide all of these and more. Bring the world to your doorstep!

In 1996, the District began developing a sophisticated communications system to keep our electric system safe, reliable, and cost effective. We currently own and operate approximately 125 miles of Fiber Optic Backbone, stretching from Spokane to near the Canadian border. The excess system capacity has been made available to our community. The formation of the Community Network System is the District’s successful strategy to bridge the Digital Divide for our communities.

For More Information Contact:

Community Network System Support

Tel: 509-447-6711 Email: information@popud.com

Community Network System News & Events

Pend Oreille County PUD is recognized on the January 2011 Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) Update

Public Utility District of Pend Oreille County promoted the project’s purpose and progress to its community shareholders and constituents through several community outreach activities including organizing a booth at a county fair, designing informational brochures, updating the project’s progress on the Pend Oreille’s website, and creating magnetic ARRA logo signs for contractor vehicles. This infrastructure project plans to bring highspeed Internet to underserved areas of Pend Oreille County in northeastern Washington State and serve more than 3,200 households, 360 business, and 24 community anchor institutions. NTIA encourages all recipients to implement outreach activities and events in your project communities and keep us informed by sharing details about any events, project milestones, and announcements. For more information about the BTOP 2011 update please click to Download BTOP Update (pdf)

Stimulus Funding

The District applied for and received a portion of the $7.2 billion dollar broadband stimulus funds made available to deploy broadband to unserved and underserved rural communities. On April 26, 2010 it was announced by Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Agency that Pend Oreille PUD was the recipient of a 27.3 million dollar grant to deploy fiber optics as a last-mile broadband solution in Pend Oreille County. The Broadband Fiber to the Premise Brochure Link contains a pdf brochure of the project description and quick facts regarding the project

The completed 48 page application is available through the links below. The remaining 159 pages of the application (83 pages are excerpts from three years of annual reports) are attachments and supporting documents and have been separated into 7 separate links to make it easier to download.

Governor Broadband Support Letter to NTIA 

Broad Success With Broadband In Pend Oreille County – Here are our beginning stories…

Seattle City Light

Partnerships are the name of the game. Seattle City Light’s (SCL) most productive generation facility, the Boundary Project, is in Pend Oreille County. To enable reliable, high-speed connectivity to Seattle, SCL joined with the District to construct fiber optics to an Internet tier-connected city, Spokane. SCL is now able to use the NoaNet infrastructure to feed broadband information and control the Boundary Project from its operations center in Seattle.

Selkirk School District

This is one of the more poignant stories of a remote school district paralyzed when it came to having teaching tools such as the Internet. Yes, the K20 Program provided robust connectivity to the high school; however, the elementary and middle schools were each located six miles away, in opposite directions, and could not e connected affordably. Each school possessed a single, dial-up modem. This meant that a classroom had a half-hour time slot each day to use the modem, and then thirty or so students had to alternate to share that allocation. Connecting to the District’s CNS System allowed both schools to have the same connection privileges as the high school. Literally, all students could be on the Internet simultaneously.

Newport Community Hospital

The Newport hospital is a relatively new and modern facility. Our community is very proud of this facility, which has developed a reputation as one of the most successful rural hospitals in the state. The hospital operates Long-Term Care and Assisted Living facilities, as well as provides services such as MRI and CT scans. The connection to the hospital enables cost-saving measures for patient billing, accounting, and tele-medical services that can be provided through ultra-fast connectivity utilizing high-speed gigabit Ethernet. The hospital now receives seven times the capacity of their old T1 circuit at a fraction of the cost.

Community Health Associates of Spokane (Rx in a Box)

Quite honestly, this was one of the favorite success stories of the District as well as for rural health care. Irreverently, we nicknamed this connection as the Pharmacist in the Box. It is more formally termed Remote Pharmaceutical Dispensing. In essence, a patient can communicate with a pharmacist, via broadband video and voice, then receive the appropriate prescription drug from a vending machine. The Selkirk clinic is located in northern Pend Oreille County, more than an hour’s drive, one-way from the nearest pharmacy. The program is developed through Community Health Associates of Spokane (CHAS). To date, this was the farthest remote site served anywhere in our entire country. Without broadband availability, this project would not have come to our community. Regrettably, grant funding ran out for this tremendous asset.

Spokane Teachers Credit Union

The connection with STCU further illustrates the importance of the public/private partnership we maintain with Retail Service Providers. The credit union’s central office and data center is located in Liberty Lake, Washington, near the Idaho border and on the outskirts of Spokane, Washington. The need for broadband connectivity to its satellite office sites, such as Newport, is imperative for reliable and efficient customer service. Oneeighty (180) Networks, in partnership with the District, was able to provision a 10 Mb Ethernet circuit between STCU’s headquarters and the Newport branch office. A broadband circuit this robust is unprecedented in rural communities, and often in many areas of the urban landscape.

Inland Northwest Health Services

The Selkirk Medical Clinic, mentioned earlier in the CHAS pharmaceutical story, has been starving for connectivity. The clinic’s needs for connectivity are great. Many services can be provided to the community to avoid an extended drive to Colville, Newport, or Spokane.

Infrasound Array

Working with the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego, a fiber optic extension was constructed to facilitate their contracted task chartered by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization. UCSD selected a site in Pend Oreille County to establish a monitoring station so sensitive it can play a role detecting nuclear explosion activity around the world. The sensitivity of the listening array extends to the atmosphere. Data from the site was also used in the analysis of the 2002 space shuttle tragedy. The fiber connectivity and the retail service provider allow UCSD real time monitoring and access to these listening arrays.

Cellular Tower

This project really embodies the “think outside the box” philosophy. This combination of want, need, and cooperation resulted in a viable plan to provide a cellular deprived community a service. In 2004, the Community Network System was able to go from funding, to construction, to operation by year’s end. To learn more… North County Communications Tower

How can your public entity or business benefit by connecting to Community Network System?

  • Facilitate Internet and Worldwide Web highspeed access
  • Exchange data at extreme speeds
  • Maximize revenues
  • Reduce costs
  • Stay responsive to markets
  • Increase reliability of products/services
  • Improve offsite communications
  • Broaden customer contacts
  • Enable high-speed web site presence
  • Unforseen possibilities

Available Products

Bandwidth Capacity: Retail Service Provider can obtain wholesale bandwidth in agreed upon increments, subject to District rate schedules, up to gigabit capacity.

Infrastructure Leasing: The District offers communication tower leasing as well as co-location space in applicable locations.

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