Fatbeam LLC, a fiber-optic broadband provider based in Coeur d’Alene, has entered into a 10-year agreement to lease to Yakima-based Noel Communications Inc. more than 60 miles of fiber-optic network in the Yakima area, says Greg Green, Fatbeam company president.

 Green declines to disclose the terms of the lease but says the upfront cost is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Fatbeam was co-founded in 2010 by Green and Shawn Swanby, owner of Post Falls-based Ednetics Inc., and operates out of a 3,000-square-foot office in downtown Coeur d’Alene, at 2065 W. Riverstone Dr. 

Fatbeam builds high-capacity fiber optic networks and then leases connectivity through so-called dark fiber, or fiber infrastructure, on a wholesale basis to hospitals, businesses, and other providers who use the infrastructure to deliver Internet service to their customers. 

Yakima-based Noel Communications delivers data services to small- and medium-sized businesses mostly in Washington state. 

Nick Guy, executive director of Noel Communications, says the company provides Internet service as well as Ethernet data transport, to businesses, health care providers, telecommunications and government customers. “This allows us to provide more communications services in the areas we serve, and to be more competitive in the Yakima area,” Guy says. 

Noel Communications also provides services to small rural communities not served by larger national corporations. 

The agreement gives Noel Communications the option to renew the contract for an additional 10 years at the end of the current term.

Green says Fatbeam’s service contracts mostly are with school districts in population centers with less than 150,000 people. Smaller communities often lack access to high-speed and high-capacity Internet. 

Fatbeam builds high-capacity fiber networks and looks to partners such as Noel Communications to further enhance connectivity and support economic development in local markets, he says. He asserts that the partnership between the companies will expand competitive access to fiber services for the greater Yakima Valley community. 

Since 2013, Fatbeam has signed more than $8 million worth of contracts to provide high-speed, fiber-optic bandwidth to customers in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, Green says. 

Noel Communications, which has been in business since 1987, is a division of the Noel Corp., which has been doing business in Yakima for more than 70 years.