The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON -Touchet Val- ley Television in Dayton will soon offer internet service with blazing speed, equal to that in the big cities. Accord- ing to owner David Klingen- stein, the firm's customers in Dayton will be able to sign up for service at speeds as high as 50-60 megabits per minute.

The higher speeds are made possible because of a new fiber optic line installed by a firm called NoaNet. It is part of a project was made possible by federal stimulus grants of $140 million, for expansion of fiber optic in- frastructure in rural areas of Washington. The total No- aNet project is estimated to cost more than $180 million.

NoaNet will install more than 1,000 miles of new fiber optic line to serve approxi- mately 170 communities and 2,000 schools, hospitals, emergency responders, li- braries, colleges and univer- sities in Washington.

NoaNet is a non-profit company headquarted in Ta- coma and owned by a group of public utility companies in Washington. The com- pany provides wholesale broadband service through- out the state.

NoaNet is already providing expanded broadband service to Dayton General

Hospital and the Dayton Memorial Library. Touchet Valley Television will con- nect soon.

"We plan to tie into the NoaNet line sometime this spring," said Klingenstein.

Klingenstein's company has already begun stringing fiber-optic line in Dayton, and will continue to do so for the next several months.

TVTV's new system, known as a fiber-coax hybrid system, will consist of fiber lines strung throughout the city, with the final sections to customers' homes running in existing coaxial cable lines connected to "nodes" on the fiber lines.

"We will split the city into eight sections," Klingenstein said. Klingenstein said the new higher speed packages should be available to cus­tomers by early summer. "The package prices will be similar to what they are now," he said.

The new Noa Net service will also allow service im­provements for customers of Columbia Energy LLC, the for-profit broadband wire­less internet provider owned by Columbia REA.

According to Nicole Ap­pleford, Columbia Energy's broadband manager, the company's current wireless broadband service will not see major changes, but by connecting to NoaNet's fiber line in Dayton, the system's reliability in the Dayton area will be greatly improved. She says the company's packages and prices will remain unchanged.