Idaho Falls Fiber marks 1,000th customer
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Idaho Falls Fiber reached a milestone Tuesday morning when its 1000th customer connected to the network.
Todd and Gina Stevenson, of Idaho Falls, plugged a small cord into a port that activated their home’s own designated fiber optic cable during a news conference. The substation containing the port, newly constructed on the eastern side of Idaho Falls, can service 2,000 customers, and it is one of 16 built around the city over the summer, according to officials.
“Right now about 6,000 customers are eligible for service,” said Bear Prairie, general manager of Idaho Falls Fiber Network. “We encourage people to go and look at the opportunity out there.”
For the Stevensons, the increased speed and reliability of fiber was a must.
“With both of us working from home, and we have a 10-year-old who is now doing online school, Zoom meetings, it was really a no-brainer,” Todd said. “Not only that, but the cost was $31 less a month, and the speed is unbelievable.”
The cost of $25 a month (plus additional internet provider fees) and the high speed was one reason the Idaho Falls City Council made residential fiber options a high priority, according to Prairie.
“We feel it’s been a very successful business model,” said Prairie. “We have download and upload speeds of 250 Mbps or 1 gig. A lot of people didn’t realize because most of your internet speeds over traditional infrastructure is only one direction. … So if people are working from home when they’re uploading files, doing Zoom calls, all of a sudden they started realizing perhaps their traditional connection, their internet, wasn’t able to provide that upload speed.”
After a pilot launch in 2018, the fiber project officially began in October 2019.
“We’ve been connecting 40 to 50 customers a week the last month as we’ve gotten to opening up these areas that we constructed over the summer,” said Prairie. “Looking forward, we have a plan to build out the rest of the city over the next four years. Our plan is in 2024 to have all 25,000 residential customers passed by and eligible to connect to the fiber network.”
As for the Stevensons, they are excited to fully use their personal fiber connection.
“It’s going to be really great for our family,” Gina said.