Broadband bound: Internet for Anaconda, Butte and Deer Lodge computer users, plus others in southwest Montana.

ANACONDA — Broadband high-speed Internet access will soon replace dial up Internet connections for many Anaconda, Butte and Deer Lodge computer users, plus others in southwest Montana.

By Vera Haffey of The Montana Standard

The service is provided locally by Rfwave Wireless Internet, a division of Dunne Communications.

“ This is a first,” co-owner Tom Dunne said recently. “ Bringing bandwidth to Anaconda and southwest Montana means bringing technology, which means bringing businesses, which brings more jobs.”

Rfwave (pronounced R-FWAVE) is a new division of Dunne Communications, which has been owned and operated locally by the Dunne family for more than 30 years. Their experience in wireless communications makes them well-suited to market and service their product, Dunne said.

“ We’re wireless people doing wireless,” he said. “ We’re not computer people who have just gotten into it.”

The wireless signals are sent from towers located in Anaconda, Butte and Deer Lodge to a wireless radio modem at the customer’s location.

To visualize data transmission through broadband technology, just picture data flowing through a pipeline like water, Dunne said.

“ That term is used in the technical community,” he said. “ People talk about the pipe, and `How big is the pipe?””

The greater the bandwidth, the bigger the pipe.

“ The bigger the pipe the more water you can put through it. We’re giving a lot bigger pipe than you get with dial up.”

For residential users, down loading music, movies, pictures and other large files will be at least 10 times faster, at speeds starting at 256k and up.

Downloading an entire album of music will take subscribers 15 minutes or less. With dial up services, the same process would take hours.

“ You’d have turned it on and went to bed,” he said, hoping by morning the connection hadn’t been broken.

Transfers of smaller files will be immediate.

“ Things will go, like that,” Dunne said, snapping his fingers. “ It’s instant.”

In many areas, high speed Internet is packaged as an amenity for subdivisions and business centers and its a necessity for many technology-based businesses.

“ It’s becoming a thing that most people expect,” Dunne said. “ If you go to any of the bigger communities in Montana that are growing, this is always there.”

Although high-speed Internet access is available in Butte, Dunne hopes to improve on the technology available, providing convenient local service and value-added service including e-mail, Web hosting and wide area networking.

“ What we hope is to take that and build on it, and build a better system,” he said. That means competitive rates and better reliability for subscribers.

Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Chief Executive Pete Boyce agrees that the technology is a necessity, and a good economic development tool.

Boyce, a proponent for technological advances for the county, says access to the high-speed broadband system will help Anaconda compete in the e-marketplace and create business opportunities.

“ It’s going to enable high speed Internet usage in Anaconda,” Boyce said. “ I think it’s some thing every community needs.”

And even with so many residential uses, broadband’s greatest application may be for businesses like financial institutions, real estate offices, manufacturers, plus schools and government agencies, Dunne said.

Businesses may transmit large amounts of data including animat ed graphical presentations, multi media clips or accounting data in seconds. Subscribers are already on line in Butte and Anaconda, Dunne said.

A local health care provider is now capable of sending X-rays to a doctor’s home for viewing on a Saturday night. A local manufacturing firm uses the system to bid on national and international contracts, and homebred businesses that transmit large files of graph ics or other data are possible.

“ Video conferencing with a client in Butte or Tokyo is now a reality,” Dunne said.

Reporter Vera Haffey may be reached via e-mail at vhaffey(at)(at)in-tch.com.

http://www.mtstandard.com/anaconda/1ana.html