At the present time, the only fiber routes serving this region are older, private ones \u201cif the route exists at all,\u201d Corbitt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTypically, private routes are costly for small (internet service providers) and those high costs are eventually passed down to the consumer,\u201d he said. \u201cHaving publicly-owned infrastructure will extend service to the (internet service providers), which should allow them to expand the connectivity to the unserved and underserved areas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Besides Grangeville, in north central Idaho, those include Cottonwood, Fenn and the Waha area, he said.<\/p>\n
In those areas, the service is hampered with the majority of communities having download speeds below 100 megabits per second and upload speeds below 20 megabits per second.<\/p>\n
That means that people in those communities have limited access to participate in work meetings remotely, watch movies online or use many common backend systems for business, Corbitt said. <\/p>\n
As telehealth as well as online work and education become more common, \u201cthe need for faster internet speeds at home has increased dramatically,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Idaho Gov. Brad Little\u2019s Broadband Taskforce in 2019 called north central Idaho the \u201c \u2018black hole\u2019 \u2019\u2019 for connectivity,\u201d Corbitt said. \u201cThe port\u2019s project lays the groundwork to help solve this critical issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
The port won support at the state and federal level to pay for the project. A total of $6.26 million comes from the Idaho Broadband Fund from the state of Idaho\u2019s general fund. Another $4.49 million is from the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration and the remaining $1.24 million is from the Port of Lewiston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the present time, the only fiber routes serving this region are older, private ones \u201cif the route…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[174,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-138906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}