Lighting up the school district

SANDPOINT — The city of Sandpoint, Bonner County and the Lake Pend Oreille School District have projects in the works to get fiber optic Internet installed.

Fatbeam, a company that installs fiber infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain region, recently entered into an agreement with LPOSD to build a 49-mile, high-capacity fiber optic network connecting the district's 13 facilities, including 11 schools and district offices.

"With the amount that we utilize technology and Internet and various web-based programs, not just from an educational level but also from our business office standpoint, speed matters," said LPOSD Superintendent Shawn Woodward. "Having fiber will be absolutely amazing when it come to the efficiency of student learning and efficiency of operations."

Matt Brass, LPOSD director of technology, said the Internet connection for the district was at 200 megabits per second, and this summer they upgraded to 300 megabits per second. The district office is the hub for the current wireless service that goes out to the schools in the district, so the Internet speed going to the schools varies and is not always reliable, Brass said. Some of the connections are around 20 to 40 megabits per second.

Fiber Internet will allow every school to have a 1 gigabit connection to the district offices, which will, in turn, have a 1 gigabit Internet connection. That is more than three times faster for the district offices, Brass said, and 10 to 20 times faster for the schools.

"It brings the reliability up and it changes the face of the classrooms," Brass said. "Teachers right now might want to show a YouTube video but they are not sure if it's going to load."

He said some of the more remote schools especially struggle with technology due to the current connectivity. A fiber infrastructure will allow all the schools to have a faster, more reliable connection.

In an email to the Daily Bee, Fatbeam President Greg Green said the company expects to have the "core," which includes all Sandpoint schools, installed by June or July 2017. The remainder of the schools, including Hope, Sagle and Clark Fork areas, done between fall, 2017 and spring, 2018.

Fatbeam won E-Rate contracts for 11 school districts in Washington, Oregon, Montana and Idaho to construct more than 200 miles of fiber throughout the region. The E-Rate program, utilized by LPOSD, is a Federal Communication Commission program that finances connectivity for schools and libraries.

According to a media release issued by Green, Fatbeam enters a market by building fiber optic networks for E-Rate funded school districts. Once the network is fully constructed in that district, Fatbeam is able to drive economic development by offering fiber to other entities in the community, such as hospitals, banks and local government.

The city of Sandpoint has been installing fiber infrastructure under the streets of the city for several years during road construction projects. City Administrator Jennifer Stapleton expects to have the city's administration buildings, such as City Hall, "lit" by the end of September.

Stapleton said the city has two main goals with the project. The first is to get the city connected and deliver a higher level of service to residents through its website and emergency communications. The second goal is economic development for businesses and residents in the city.

"Fatbeam, the city and county have been working together to ensure our networks connect with one another and we continue to work closely to gain any value that can help drive economic development," Green said in the email to the Daily Bee. "Working with Jennifer Stapleton with the city has been a blessing and we continue to look forward to partnering with community leaders."