Page 26 - Flathead Beacon // 1.22.13

26 | JANUARY 22, 2014
FLATHEADBEACON.COM

BUSINESS

PH
OTO
ILLU
STRA
TION
BY S
TEV
E LAR
SON
| FLA
THE
AD BE
ACO
N

BOy TRISTAN SCOTT of the Beacon
The ranking is according to Ookla’s residents, has the fastest broadband In- as a vast Internet black hole spanning
Net Index, a measure of Internet speed ternet in America with an average down- the rural, rocky landscape between the
n the information super high- maintained by a company formed in Ka- load speed of 85.5 Mbps — due in large tech-savvy Paciic Northwest and oil-

way, Montana remains in the lispell in 2006, and which now has oic- part to the fact that Ephrata is home to rich North Dakota.
slow lane.
es in Seattle. Ookla’s software, available iFiber Communications, a broadband But it’s not for lack of trying.
According to a recent at Speedtest.net, allows users across company that covers four sparsely pop- The state of Montana is committed
analysis of national broadband rankings, the country to test Internet download ulated rural Washington counties.
to developing a long-term strategy to in-
conducted by a Kalispell-based software speeds.
The study found that Kansas City, crease broadband use in communities.
and broadband testing company, Mon- For the irst half of last year, it found which in 2011 was selected by Google That’s because in the digital age,
tana is lagging behind in its Internet that Montana’s average download speed for an experiment to bring high-speed access to broadband is critical to run a

speed, which, once considered a conve- of 7.3 megabits per second falls well be- Internet access to metro areas, ranked school, a business or a hospital. Slipping
nience, is now increasingly viewed as an low the national average of 18.2 megabits second at an average speed of 49.9 Mbps.
in national broadband rankings can be
essential medium for delivering services per second (Mbps).
According to a map of Ookla’s geo- a disadvantage not only to companies
like education and health care, and for
Conversely, the tiny town of Eph- graphic data, composed by the technol- hamstrung by a sluggish Internet con-
promoting economic development.
rata, Wash., which is home to just 7,664
ogy blog Gizmodo, Montana appears
nection, but also in terms of attracting

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