“Boulder could become one of the only towns in Montana where everyone is being offered fiber [high speed internet access],” Montana Internet CEO Josh Romandia told the Jefferson County Commission June 12.
Chuck Siefert, CEO before Romandia, said a proposal from his company could provide “the ability to connect this town up to the 21st century.”
“You guys are looking at how to be cutting edge,” Romandia said. “This offer makes an impact right away.”
Rusty Giulio, Boulder mayor, had been in talks with Romandia for a while, coming up with a proposal that Romandia said could provide speeds of one gigabit per second. That would be ten times the current speed at the courthouse of 100 megabits per second.
Under the proposal, Montana Internet would get signed agreements with three “anchor sites” – the two schools and the county offices. That would allow them to bring in fiber to serve other businesses and residences at reasonable rates, he said.
The fiberoptic cable “can produce enough bandwidth to light up New Jersey,” said Romandia. That allows for lots of future expandability, he said.
“It’s a huge opportunity to attract commerce,” he added.
The county would have to pay more than the $2500 per month it currently does, with rates increasing by about $1000-$1300 per month, Romandia estimated.
Bonnie Ramey said the current service is not adequate for all of the applications her office uses at times. Nearly every day the computers in her office “gray out,” she said.
The current contract runs into September, said county officials.
Romandia said if the county could call for bids for the internet service shortly, there would be no downtime in the transition. His company could be ready to roll when the current contract ends, he said.
“That pretty much has to be a guarantee,” said Ramey, who has a general election to prepare for.
“No downtime,” repeated Romandia.
Commissioner Bob Mullen asked whether designing a bid request for speeds of one gigabit would exclude all other bidders, Romandia said others could do that if they wanted but probably not as quickly.
Montana Internet staffers with Romandia said the fiberoptic line would require far fewer repairs than other means, would open the doors for lots of expandability and would increase local home values.
“It’s stability. It’s reliability,” said Romandia.
“The way we see it is everyone wins,” he said.
The commission agreed to put on their agenda for June 26 a discussion of whether to call for bids and what to ask for in a bid package.
