Blackfoot fiber projects progress

The effort by Blackfoot Communications to connect homes from Trout Creek to Plains to high-speed Internet and telephone service continues for Blackfoot Communications.

JB Ray, Network Infrastructure Manager for Blackfoot, said crews will continue to work on connecting homes in the Thompson Falls area as long as weather allows this year, and will pick back up in the spring. Connections in Plains will begin in the spring, as contractors are continuing to work on laying fiber lines from the main line to homes.

In both areas, the rocky ground has presented a challenge, according to Ray. Another challenge for the company has been communication with customers. To connect the new fiber line to existing homes and properties, Blackfoot and their contractors must make contact with customers to communicate about the plan for their property. In some cases, customers may not return calls right away. Contractors then have to shift locations to where they have made contact with customers and can continue placing lines. Ray said that in Plains the company has changed the process and customers who they cannot reach will be bumped to the end of the project, when contractors will come back to an area and connect any customers they missed.

Mary Worden, Director of Operations at Blackfoot, said the company is doing 40-50 installs per week. The company has more than 2,400 customers to connect to fiber in the Trout Creek and Thompson Falls area, and at the end of September over 1400 were connected. More than 1,500 customers will be connected when the Plains project is complete. Worden and Ray both said that the number of installs increases as new people move to the area, or previous residents get connected to Blackfoot services for the first time.

“This is such a huge project. We’ve been working in the Thompson Falls area for four years. A lot of miles of fiber had to be put in the ground,” said Ray. “Overall the project has been a huge success for us.” To put the scale of the project in perspective, over 400 miles of fiber optic cable have been laid in the Thompson Falls and Trout Creek area so far, and more than 60 miles in Plains has been completed. “Plains is going good,” he added “Again there was more rock than crews were hoping for, but over 130 drops (laying fiber to residents’ homes) have been completed.” The Plains project is expected to take more than two years. Ray said the goal is to get as much fiber in the ground as they can before the winter weather. Phase two of the Plains project will take contractors along the south side of the Clark Fork River to lay fiber, and that is expected to begin next year.

Both Ray and Worden expressed the complexity of the program, stating that once the fiber is in the ground, customers are not automatically ready to be connected to the higher-speed services. The fiber has to be cut and spliced. “It’s such a complicated process,” Worden said. “There is lots of splicing and connecting.”

“That takes a lot of time,” Ray added. “It’s a very large project. It’s super fun but it’s never as fast as we want. The majority of the people who have been connected have been happy with it.”

Blackfoot is working to bring fiber optic cabling to other communities in their service area as well. Ray said the project in St. Ignatius should wrap up next year, and a project in the Philipsburg area will begin next year.

Blackfoot has more than 30 people working on the projects at different times, and Worden expressed that they are looking for additional staff. Anyone interested in working with the contractors or Blackfoot can reach the company at (406) 541-5000.