By:
Laurie Petroni
The Diamond Lake area may soon have another high-speed-internet service option. Corey George from the Pend Oreille Valley Network (POVN) has been working with Pend Oreille County to lease space in its Cook’s Mountain building in order to set up the Motorola wireless equipment. Currently, the Pend Oreille Public Utility District has a small fiber- to-home pilot project at Diamond Lake based in Ione, WA. It provides service to a small number of homes on the Lake.
The initial range of the projected service
will be an 8-mile radius. The signal
will be sent from POVN’s Newport operation to Cook’s
Mountain, and from there it would be distributed via point-to-point connections
to homes and businesses on Diamond Lake. Homeowners would need special
equipment to get connected, but the new speed would be about 4 megs and service would be available 24 hours a day.
Depending on permits and the weather, the
new service could be available some time this spring.