Columbia Fiber Solutions Inc., the Spokane concern that owns the former Avista Corp. fiber-optic network here and has focused strictly on offering fiber to companies that have their own equipment to use it, now plans to light up some of its fiber for those that dont.


The company is installing the electronic equipment necessary to provide litor managed Ethernetservices to prospective customers that dont have the equipment necessary to use whats called dark fiber, says John Everett, its general manager.


Dark fiber refers to fiber-optic cable that has been laid but hasnt been activated and isnt carrying a signal. Columbia Fiber has lots of it. It leases fiber strands for a flat monthly fee, based on distance, to customers who then set up their own electronic gear at each endlighting it, so to speakand who configure it themselves to fit their particular voice, data, video, and imaging needs. Columbia Fibers new service will target customers who dont want to set up their own systems.


Were just now starting to talk to some prospects about it, Everett says. We are excited about it. Its going to give us an opportunity to sell to those folks who for whatever reason dont want dark fiber.


Columbia Fibers network encompasses about 300 miles of fiber-optic cable that stretches through most of the Spokane metropolitan area and reaches into Post Falls, Coeur dAlene, and Hayden, Idaho. A portion of it is concentrated in the downtown Spokane area known as the Terabyte Triangle, and a network hub is located in the U.S. Bank Building downtown, where the company is installing the new equipment. About 95 percent of the companys fiber-optic cable is strung on utility poles, and the remaining 5 percent is buried. In all, about 250 buildings currently are connected to the system.


Our bread and butter is multi-site operations, Everett says, referring to companies, institutions, and agencies that operate branch or satellite facilities.


Columbia Fibers clients span a range of industries and market sectors, including education, health care, financial services, manufacturing, broadcasting, government, and utilities, and also include small businesses, he says. The company derives about two-thirds of its revenues by leasing fiber to end users, and the rest by leasing fiber wholesale to telecommunication companies that in turn use it to provide broadband services to their customers, he says. Perhaps not surprisingly, in the topsy-turvy telecom industry, Columbia Fiber sometimes competes for customers with the companies to which it leases fiber.


Hotly competitive market


It will face plenty of additional competition in the litservices market its entering, where established providers include such prominent companies as Qwest, XO Communications, Verizon, Time Warner Telecom, and Spokane-based OneEighty Networks, Everett says.


Its going to take us a while to build up a book of business, because of that heavy competition, he acknowledges. Nevertheless, he adds, We think well be very competitive on price because we own the infrastructure.


The managed Ethernet services Columbia Fiber will be providing refers to a type of high-speed networking technology for local area networks, or LANs, which commonly are used to create communication systems within a building or complex. Part of the companys hope with the new service is to attract business from single-location clients that dont need dark fiber, since they dont have multiple buildings to link up, and only want a bigger Internet pipe, he says.


He declines to disclose the rates Columbia Fiber plans to charge for its Ethernet services, or what it currently charges for dark fiber. In regard to the latter, though, he claims the company can be real competitive real fast for customers that have or anticipate heavy bandwidth needs, such as for remote data backup and recovery capabilities.


Columbia Fiber is spending an undisclosed amount of money to install the needed equipment in its downtown hub so it can begin providing managed Ethernet services, Everett says.


He describes the installation as a relatively modest capital investment, and says he doesnt know yet whether the company, which currently has seven full-time employees, will need to add more employees to manage the added service. Thats going to be dependent on how fast it grows, he says.


Regardless of that growth, Columbia Fiber expects dark fiber to remain its primary business focus and to continue to provide the lions share of its revenue.


One reason for that is the vast amount of still-untapped capacity on the current network. Rather than physically expanding the network, which Columbia Fiber believes is close to being adequately sized for the Spokane-Coeur dAlene market, the company is focusing on signing up new clients within the current networks reach and providing the needed last mile hookupsbetween the network and individual buildingsto serve them.


My goal in life is getting more people on this network, Everett says, asserting, Many times we can do that pretty inexpensively. He adds that there are more than 1,000 multi-site organizations within the networks reach, so there is potential to expand use of the network.


Dark-fiber benefits


Also, Columbia Fiber is convinced that demand will grow because of the benefits dark fiber offers end users who want to be in control of their own communications networks, rather than having to rely on outside service providers.


Customers get exclusive use of the fiber-optic strands they lease, which eliminates or reduces concerns in areas such as security, network congestion, and system reliability, Everett says. Furthermore, the monthly fee for leasing the fiber remains the same regardless of how elaborate the users system grows or how much its used, he says.


It really is limited only by what you, the customer, are willing to invest in electronics. Its virtually unlimited bandwidth at a fixed cost, Everett asserts.


Not long ago, he says, that equipment was expensive and required knowledgeable technicians to set it up and keep it running. Today, he says, its much more affordable, with some point-to-point Ethernet transceivers costing less than $1,000, and a lot of the equipment is plug-and-playable.


Most of Columbia Fibers customers are on three- to five-year contracts, Everett says.


Its rare for customers to leave us, he claims. The companies that use our fiber more often than not have built their businesses around that fiber.


Columbia Fibers offices are located at 10905 E. Montgomery. Along with the hub in the U.S. Bank Building, the company also leases some space in the Riverbend Commerce Park in Post Falls. Everett says he and all of the companys employees formerly had worked for Avista Corp. when it owned the fiber-optic network.


Were an engineering company for the most part, so most of our resources are devoted to engineering, he says.


Columbia Fiber is owned by Columbia Ventures Corp., a multinational, diversified holding company based in Vancouver, Wash., and is operated through a limited-liability subsidiary called FiberLink LLC.


Columbia Ventures acquired the fiber-optic network from Avista in a transaction that closed last Oct. 1. The network was the last of a number of communications assets to be sold off by Avista.


WWP Fiber Inc., a subsidiary of Avista when the utility company was known as Washington Water Power Co., began developing the network in the late 1990s, together with then Spokane-based Packet Engines Inc., after winning a contract from Spokane School District No. 81, Everett says. That contract was part of a major technology upgrade at all of the districts schools and involved creating a fiber-optic network to connect them. In addition to winning that contract, WWP Fiber was stringing cable throughout Spokane for a consortium of educational institutions called the Educational Metropolitan Area Network.


That (educational work) was the real genesis of this network, Everett says. Though that process we were able to deploy a lot of cable around this area, and since then many noneducational clients have been added to the network.


He says revenue growth has been mostly flat since Columbia Fiber acquired the network, but the company is profitable. He attributes the weak growth more to the poor local economy than to the lingering industry-wide glut of fiber-optic network capacity that followed the crash of the technology sector a couple of years ago. Business will pick up, he predicts, as the economy here begins to recover.