High-speed internet comes to Washington Island as Phase 1 of fiber optic project wraps up
WASHINGTON ISLAND - Some of Door County's highest internet speeds are now available in a place that previously offered some of the slowest, as Quantum Technologies and the Washington Island Electric Cooperative have completed Phase 1 of their fiber optic internet project for the Island.
The $7 million project to bring high-speed internet service to Washington Island, a joint effort of Sturgeon Bay-based Quantum and the local electric cooperative, is being rolled out to the public in five phases that will provide the opportunity of connecting the entire island, about 1,100 potential customers, to its fiber optic cable network by 2027 and greatly improve cellphone service and accessibility.
The phases are for the most part geographic zones on the Island, said Andrew Kleidon, marketing specialist for Quantum Technologies. Robert Cornell, manager of the electric cooperative, said this first phase is a combination of two zones, all of zones 1A and 3, covering much of the western third of the Island.
Phase 1, which saw customers connected between October and January, focused on hooking up all of what Kleidon called the Island's anchor institutions, meaning essential services such as the police and fire departments, Town Hall, the school, the airport, the visitor center, Mosling Recreation Center and churches.
Also provided service in Phase 1 were the businesses and residences near the Washington Island Ferry Line dock in the southwestern corner of the Island. Outside of the area around the harbor, coverage now is available roughly along Main Road heading north to Schoolhouse Beach and along town Line Road between Main and Mountain Road, as well as several areas branching off from those.
In all, 300 homes, businesses and essential services can now have high-speed internet in this first phase. The goal was 225, Kleidon said, but the work was being done so efficiently and ahead of schedule that Quantum and the cooperative decided to keep going. The project calls for 225 connections in each of the remaining four phases over the next three years.
"Everything is laid out in zones, and we're kind of tackling those one at a time as we go through," Kleidon said. "We were initially hoping to do 225 (connections on the first phase), but we have a great team up there that was able to blow through those.
"From here on out, it's just getting to as many private customers as possible. The goal is to be connected to every home and business on the Island at some point."
Cornell said not everyone who has access to the service has signed up yet, with many of those potential customers seasonal residents who are more likely to sign up when they return to the Island. Others just may not be interested. He said he expects about 80% of the 1,100 residences, businesses and other services that will have availability to sign up.
"I had one person who said, 'I don't even have a TV. I got up here to get away from all that,'" Cornell said. "Those sorts of people are the only people who really said no."
Why fiber optic was needed
Prior to this project, internet service only was available on the Island through DSL (digital subscriber line) or several different satellite signal providers.
None offer the internet speeds possible with fiber optic service, and distortion of the signal increases while strength and speed decrease as the distance the signal has to travel increases through the copper wires used for DSL. With the glass filaments used in fiber optic cable, signal strength and speed remain constant from one end to the other.
A 2022 news release from Quantum said a two-hour-long, 4.5-gigabyte, high-definition movie takes about 38 seconds to download through a fiber optic service with a transfer rate of 1 gigabyte per second, or 1,000 megabytes. The same download would take about six and a half minutes with a cable connection and nearly 26 minutes with DSL.
The fiber optic service also should dramatically improve reliability. A microwave tower that served as the Island's link to internet service failed in 2019, leaving the Island without internet and phone service for up to nine days.
Cornell also noted the fiber optic will greatly improve the Island's sometimes-spotty cellphone service. He said that part of the reason the cooperative wanted at least part of zone 3 included in the first phase was to offer internet service to the Schoolhouse Beach area on the northwestern side of the Island, an area that previously had no cell reception at all. Cornell said there was an emergency situation in the past on the beach where people had to leave the beach and get closer to Jackson Harbor Road to be able to call for help, so hooking up the beach area was a priority.
The electric cooperative, which serves as the Island's power company, will own the network and be its internet service provider.
How fast (and how much) is the internet being offered?
The internet plans offered by the co-op provide upload/download speeds of 100 or 300 megabytes per second (Mbps) or 1 gigabyte per second service. The fastest speeds available from other providers to the Island are a maximum of 100 Mbps, and those are the satellite providers, with DSL providers offering slower speeds. Cornell said the service is expandable to 10 Gbps in the future once more preparatory work is completed.
Rates are $59.95 a month for 100 Mbps plan, $69.95 for 300 Mbps or $89.95 for 1 Gbps, which is what they were projected when the project was announced. With the cooperative owning the network, fees to use it will be added to electric bills of members who choose to subscribe to the service. These are not introductory rates and are expected to remain stable as long as operating costs do.
Quantum and the cooperative first worked together in 2018, when the 23,000-foot-long submarine cable that provided power to the Island failed after years of abuse from ice shoves and age. Instead of repair, the cooperative chose to replace it with a new cable that would include fiber, at which point it began talking with Quantum about a joint effort to provide high-speed internet. Work began in April 2021.
"A couple of forward-thinking people on the Island said maybe we can start laying fiber optic in there," Kleidon said. "They're the ones who fought to make this happen."
Quantum also is maintaining a presence on the Island, with a store it opened last year at 1929 Town Line Road, in a vacant business bought by the company, that customers can visit for repair work and other services.
For more, visit wiecoop.com.
Contact Christopher Clough at 920-562-8900 or cclough@doorcountyadvocate.com.
MORE: Sevastopol High School students sweep Miss Door County, Door County's Teen titles
MORE: Door County Granary heads into final phase of becoming a community center and museum
MORE: Door County is your home for fun February festivals and events. Here's a look at them.
FOR MORE DOOR COUNTY NEWS: Check out our website
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Services, businesses on Washington Island now have high-speed internet
