For a company like Vubiquity, broadband access is everything.

Chief Technology Officer Mike Kazmier said the video content provider, formerly known as Avail-TVN, would have loved to base its entire operation in Kalispell, but it has never been possible given the lack of affordable bandwidth in the region.

Kazmier was a representative of the customer side of the equation at a Montana West Economic Development-sponsored forum on May 21 at Flathead Valley Community College —  “Bandwidth Muscle: The Machine for 21st Century Economic Growth!” 

As a digital media services middleman, Vubiquity takes in media content, refines it and distributes it to multiple platforms through the Internet, in multiple languages. This takes enormous amounts of bandwidth, which refers to the amount of data that can be transferred from one point to another in a given amount of time.

“Just like Plum Creek uses their trucks on the interstate, we use the information superhighway,” Kazmier said. 

At the bandwidth forum were representatives of three entities that are leading the way to change the situation for companies such as Vubiquity, realizing how crucial efficient and affordable bandwidth is to the economic future of Northwest Montana as well as their own interests. 

The Health Information Exchange of Montana, the Ronan Telephone Company and MontanaSky Networks are cooperating on a build of a middle-mile fiber-optic network with infrastructure stretching from Missoula up through Polson, Kalispell and Whitefish, as well as from Kalispell to Libby. 

Certain legs of the network are already completed and the rest should be done by the end of the year.  

The project was initiated when the Montana Health Information Exchange received a federal award for $13.6 million to create a dedicated health-care network for the exchange of information for health-care providers and to provide higher education in health care.

The nonprofit corporation, founded by five Montana hospitals and two community health centers, was working under the stipulation that its new line be used only for health care, but in the process of building the network it could create excess capacity by adding more fibers within a trench, and then lease those fibers. 

So MontanaSky, a network service provider based in Kalispell, jumped on board and pitched in part of the money needed for a matching grant, as did Ronan Telephone Company. 

“We initiated it and got into cooperative arrangements to lease our excess capacity,” said Kip Smith, executive director of the Health Information Exchange. “They’re using it for general business and residential services. They’re leveraging what we were able to do, but doing it for the folks we can’t serve.”

The new network will offer almost unlimited bandwidth for business customers of Montana Sky, at lower prices than have been available in the past. Some businesses are already signed up, said Troy Waller of MontanaSky.

“It’s almost unlimited with these fiber optics what it can do,” Waller said. “It’s almost an infinite amount. There are gigs and gigs available if customers need it — most customers will never need that much.”

The term “middle mile” refers to the backbone of a network built between major hubs. The “last mile” refers to the part of the network that actually reaches the customers.

The Health Information Exchange will be adding “last mile” fibers to reach a clinic in Polson, for instance, Smith said. The network among hospitals and clinics will cover an area ranging from Missoula to Libby to Shelby.  

Before the fiber optics, health providers in the network were connected by a 1.5 megabit T1 line. The sites will now be linked with 100-megabit connections, Smith said.

“It’s speed, clarity and capacity to do more things at the same time,” he said. “You really bog down on a T1 line pretty quickly.”

Smith said the new line will save time and possibly save lives. For example, the digital radiography outreach to remote communities will be far more efficient.

“If it takes a longer time to transmit an image to a radiologist and read and interpret, that means the patient is waiting and at times it could be a life-threatening situation,” he said. “They need to know as quickly as possible from that remote community what to do.”

MontanaSky will be the retail provider for the new network. Waller said the increases in bandwidth and provider competition will be major factors luring new businesses to the valley.

“It is already having an immediate effect on bandwidth prices and more choices for consumers that will give them more tools to do more,” Waller said of the project. 

“When you have only one provider, they have no incentive to lower cost. That unfortunately is a hindrance to business development and becomes a limitation to what customers can do with their businesses. If you want to do certain things, you need bandwidth, and if it’s cost-prohibitive you’ll change what you do or outsource to places that have that bandwidth available.”

The project will have a trickle-down impact for private households, Waller said, but its primary customers will be businesses. Creating a fiber-optics network in rural areas, especially beyond the middle mile, is usually not cost-efficient, Waller said. There is no return on an investment when the line doesn’t reach the population density found in an urban area.

“In a place like Seattle, you can fiber a block and hit 10,000 people,” he said. “You can easily spend the money because you’ll get a return on your investment a lot quicker.”

Ronan Telephone Company provided a $5 million match for its portion of the fiber-optic construction, which is both underground and above ground on poles already in place. 

Ronan Telephone had received a $13 million federal grant in 2010 to expand a fiber-optic cable network from the Kalispell area to Elmo, Polson, Pablo, Flathead Lake’s east and west shores, Big Arm, Hot Springs, Camas Prairie and several communities surrounding Browning for abour 330 miles total of fiber optics.  

“One of the ways to maintain economic health is to attract high-tech, data-intensive businesses,” Jay Preston Jr. said at the bandwidth forum. “We’re hoping our project will enable that.”

 Reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4439 or by email at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com