The Buzz: Silver Star ‘wires’ Jackson

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

By Jake Nichols

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Silver Star Communications recently announced it is near completion on a major fiber optics project that is expected to connect Jackson Hole with the world at Internet speeds up to 100 times faster than previous configuration allowed. The Teton Broadband Project is financed primarily by a federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant under the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

“With this connection, we can literally act on a global stage, in real time, with incredible speed and capacity. This project will transform the way we do business in Wyoming,” said Silver Star Chief Operations Officer Ron McCue.

A state-of-the-art fiber optics trunk line over Togwotee Pass now connects the Town of Jackson with Dubois Telephone, who currently own a fiber optics transmission line running from Casper, Wyo., as far west as Brooks Lake Lodge. Toward Idaho, a fiber optics line was buried over Old Pass Road, connecting Jackson with Idaho’s independent network. Closing the two final gaps in the system will vastly improve wireless communications, Internet use, and television transmissions for customers across the board, according to McCue.

“We have an agreement in principal with Bresnan to use some of the line as well. It’s not just for Silver Star,” McCue said. “We like to think of it as: A rising tide lifts all boats. What will all users see from this? What I suspect is, eventually, customers will be offered higher broadband speeds as a whole.”

Under the terms of the federal grant, Silver Star also must provide service to so-called anchor institutions. St. John’s Medical Center, town agencies, schools, and emergency services are just some of the 60 or so institutions expected to benefit from the beefed up telecommunications. McCue said now that the trunk line is in place, spidering out to these in-county anchor institutions is next as soon as the ground thaws to allow for digging.

“We will get to them next in a largely logistical manner,” McCue said. We [tested] Lower Valley Energy on January 2. We put their traffic on Silver Star traffic for three or four days to make sure it worked right. We’ve also done some test work with Hotel Terra in Teton Village. For the rest of the anchor facilities it is a market-based approach; it just depends on what does their IT department want? We are meeting with the hospital, police department, and city entities right now.”
Lower Valley Energy was a ‘guinea pig’ by design. Partnerships between Silver Star and LVE go back more than 60 years.

“You know, Silver Star started as a co-op in 1948 in Freedom, Wyoming,” McCue said. “Two doors down was Lower Valley Energy. In 1956, the Hoopes family bought out the co-op and formed a private entity. About that time, LVE moved into Jackson. We both have modest roots as providers.”

A job well done
Many Western Wyoming residents know Silver Star only as the little local wireless phone company for ranchers. The image has been branded into the general public through marketing, McCue acknowledges, but make no mistake: Silver Star is a major player in telecommunications technology.

Laying of the fiber optics line over Togwotee Pass was contracted out to Track Utilities from Meridian, Idaho. The contractor chosen for the Teton Pass project was Tetra Tech out of Denver, Colo. Both firms performed flawlessly.
“They were both phenomenal to work with and I don’t say that lightly,” McCue said. “I say that as a man with 34 years in the business. They were on schedule and on budget. They cleaned up behind themselves and they haven’t ticked off the community.”

Silver Star did run out of time before the onset of winter to properly reseed a section from Antelope Flats to Triangle X – a job they plan to finish in the spring. They also have left unfinished a restoration of the Old Pass Road area where McCue says his company is still committed to reestablishing the road torn up by trenching to a condition better than before the project began.

McCue says he has been in conversation with officials from Bridger-Teton National Forest and Friends of Pathways to determine the best course of action in repairing Old Pass Road. McCue says he thinks paying a mitigation fee to BTNF or FOP might be the best alternative in the long run. “Why repave a very short stretch of road when the money could go farther as part of a bigger project to renovate the entire trail system?” McCue said.

So how long before the new fiber optic line is considered old and obsolete? McCue says that’s a tough question but his company always has the future in mind.
“We made it possible to replace cable inside the conduit without re-digging, and often we have an additional empty conduit alongside the trunk line for some future use,” McCue said. “The physical fiber optics can probably last 30 to 50 years.

And, [technology-wise], it’s not the carrying capacity of the cable itself that is the limiting factor today. The capacity of fiber optics has still not reached its outer limits. What it is governed by is the laser equipment you put on either end of it. These lasers are good to about seven years out before we expect newer technology will [make them obsolete]. Physically, they would probably last 12 or 15 years.”

courtesy SILVER STAR COMMUNICATIONS
New fiber optics expected to boost speed and quality of local telecommunications.

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