When a tree severed a main fiber optic line in the Port Ludlow area on Monday and left many people without Internet service, some asked, “Isn’t the Sappho Gap closed?”
The answer is “no,” and redundant fiber optic access onto the North Olympic Peninsula for Qwest Communications customers could be more than six months in the future, despite all the hardware for it having been installed in 2002.
Qwest has decided to build its own fiber optic line to provide redundancy.
That’s in lieu of negotiating with CenturyTel of Washington state and Oregon to use an existing redundant line that would close a 26-mile gap between broadband communication networks on Clallam County’s east and west sides.
It’s known as the Sappho Gap because it is near the community of Sappho on U.S. Highway 101.
“We’ve found an alternative solution along the west side of Hood Canal that better serves our customers,” said Qwest spokeswoman Dana Dyksterhuis.
“It should be completed in the first or second quarter of 2008,”
“It will accomplish the same thing, just along a different route,” she said.
“It will be a wholly-owned Qwest route.”
The gap in redundancy was created after Qwest installed an 85-mile fiber optic line from Silverdale to Joyce in October 2000, and CenturyTel installed a fiber optic trunk from Aberdeen to Forks in January 2001.
In April 2001, a state Community Economic Revitalization grant of $1.7 million was approved for the installation of a fiber-optic cable to fill the gap.
The equipment was installed, but the two networks never were connected, meaning fiber optic network traffic couldn’t be switched to one line if the other was blocked or severed.
