In a phrase, “Quite by Accident”. My quest to bring high-speed internet to Skamokawa is fully grounded in my personal need to support our dreams. In March of 2017, my wife and I were camping at Vista park enjoying the view on the recommendation of a Facebook friend.We thoroughly enjoyed our time here and decided to come back in the fall.In October of that same year while camping once again we quite literally stumbled on a house for sale adjacent to the park and on the river. We decided to look at it and then decided to enter into the adventure of moving to this lovely community. Since my wife is self-employed as an interior decorator and I had a part-time technology business we dreamed that we could actually make it work. However, there was a really big problem, the need for high-speed internet for our businesses.
I began checking into the current options and didn’t get a single encouraging word from current residents or businesses. I did some more checking and found out that high-speed fiber ran along the highway and began looking into what it would take to tap into that for our businesses. Working with NoaNet and then Wave Broadband I am confident that high-speed access to the internet for the community is a very real possibility.
Phase I will be to “lite the fiber” and establish a “network interface device” location near one of the two fiber vaults in the heart of our community. We’ll use that to establish a “point to multi-point” radio to transmit that connection to nearby homes and businesses.
Phase II will be to establish a working relationship with Wahkiakum Port District 2 or the Wahkiakum PUD to bring fiber to the home and then lease those lines from them to enable the highest possible speeds to each user.
I’m surprised how difficult this has been for what seems like it should be a fairly easy project, but I am confident that our community will benefit tremendously from this connection to the rest of the world.
Steve