Broadband internet comes to Lincoln County 

It took being out on transmission towers on blizzards in December, but Lincoln County residents finally have high-speed broadband internet access.

“3,000 of our 5,200 residents are severely underserved,” said Rebecca Wood, county commissioner and board chair. “This project was to help them get service.” 

The state of Lincoln County internet 

North of Twin Falls, Lincoln County is between Jerome and Blaine counties on the Highway 93 corridor. Its three largest cities are Richfield, Dietrich and Shoshone, Wood said.  

Many areas of the county couldn’t get internet at all, and the internet it did have was poor. Wood’s house got 25 megabits per second (mbps) download speeds and 3 mbps upload speeds, the bare minimum Federal Communications Commission definition of broadband, established in 2015. The county courthouse had been upgraded but didn’t get much better than that.  

“All three cities had the same problem,” Wood said. “We try to have Zoom and live feeds from our meetings, and it goes down continually. Our businesses said they couldn’t grow because they had such poor connectivity. Schools had horrible internet, and some don’t have it at all at their home. You see six kids on the sidewalk in front of the library trying to do homework.” 

The regional governments tried talking to internet service providers about improving and were told it would cost too much and the area was too small, Wood said.  

Then Georgia Dimick, disaster recovery coordinator for Region IV, let Wood know that Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act funding was available to boost the region’s internet. But they would have to be quick — the grant had to be used by Dec. 31.  

“We had 100 days to totally get this done,” Wood said. 

How the project came together 

Lincoln County partnered with Eminent Technical Solutions (ETS), based in Layton, Utah, but also with offices in Declo, to put together the grant, including a 100+-page report, said CEO Curtis Bennett. 

The $1.5 million grant — one of the biggest in the state — provided a data center, servers, a 235-foot communications tower, and fiber optic cabling in Shoshone and a 160-foot-tower in Dietrich, Bennett said. “We were able to repurpose a water tower in Richfield,” he added. In addition, all three city halls and the county courthouse were wired with fiber optic cabling. 

Bennett credited the collaborative relationship between the county and the three cities for the project’s success and said that local businesses stepped up as well. Glanbia Foods donated property for a smaller tower north of Richfield, 4-Bros Dairy in Shoshone let ETS use its silos and the Lincoln County Rec Center let ETS put the 235-foot tower on its property. Residents and businesses within line of sight of a tower can get wireless broadband internet service. 

And remember, this was in December. 

“We were on towers in blizzards, but we had no choice,” Wood said. “We were in a blizzard, with a blanket, going from site to site, taking videos to turn into the Department of Commerce to certify by the end of December.” 

What’s next? 

Now ETS is signing up residents and businesses for the 50 mbps/50 mbps service, which costs $55 per month, plus $500 installation. “We can’t keep up,” Bennett said. “The insatiable hunger for good internet is really starting to manifest.” 

That was Phase 1. Now Lincoln County is working on Phase 2, which will include fiber to the home, and will pay for installation, instead of the homeowner paying for it, Wood said. 

Lincoln County has a grant application out with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and is working on another one from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as petitioning the state for more funds when they’re released, Bennett said. “We’re anticipating through the course of this year that we’ll get an affirmative response and begin the project,” which he expects will take two years.