The Sappho gap isn’t closed after all — as people across the North Olympic Peninsula found out this week when a falling tree cut a fiber optic line near Port Ludlow.
A telecommunications project to provide a redundant fiber optic route off the Olympic Peninsula for high-speed Internet and other telecommunications services was completed in 2002.
It bridged a 26-mile gap in fiber optic lines between Joyce and Forks that came to be named after the small West End town of Sappho.
But Qwest Communications never reached an expected agreement to lease the 26-mile line across the gap from CenturyTel of Washington, Inc.
Instead, Qwest is building its own redundant fiber optics line off the Olympic Peninsula that is expected to be operational by year’s end, according to company spokeswoman Shasha Richardson.
Richardson said Qwest is in the final stages of getting an easement from the Mason County Public Utility District to locate a regeneration cabinet, which is where the signals connect.
“We hope to have permits for that shortly,” she said.
The fact that the Sappho Gap still exists surprises those who worked years ago to close it.
“I haven’t heard about the Sappho gap for several years. I thought it was a done deal,” said state Rep. Jim Buck, R-Joyce.
Tree makes gap apparent
The gap became apparent on Monday when a falling alder severed an overhead fiber optic line at Paradise and Andy Cooper roads south of Port Ludlow.
Cellular and long-distance telephone service as well as high-speed Internet services were knocked out throughout the North Olympic Peninsula from 3:45 p.m. until 10:12 p.m.
Richardson said the company didn’t know the geographic extent of the outage or how many lost communication services.
But disruptions in computer and phone service were reported all along the Peninsula.
Puget Sound Energy spokesman Roger Thompson said he didn’t know why the tree fell, but that at this time of year, when a dry summer is followed by rain, trees may soak up the moisture, their limbs will get heavy, and some may break.
Qwest is considering putting that fiber optic line underground, Richardson said.
In late October 2004, that same fiber optic line was severed by a large tree, knocking out PenCom 9-1-1 service throughout Clallam County.
The 9-1-1 services in Clallam and Jefferson counties were not affected in Monday’s outage.
Surprised by gap
The disruptions were a surprise for Buck and Forks City Attorney/Planner Rod Fleck, both of whom worked to plug the gap.
“We spent a lot of money . . . to get redundancy and the communities are advertising it,” said Buck.
“The [legislative] coastal caucus will be extremely unhappy when this comes out,” he said.
“We had communities that were cut off out here.
Fleck also said he had thought the Sappho gap was closed.
“There’s been an effort by CenturyTel to make this happen. The lines are in place, switchboxes in place, hardware is in the ground,” he said.
“CenturyTel paid for its own connect,” he said, while the Qwest line was funded in part by money the company had paid to the state to settle a suit accusing the company of overcharging customers.
“It would allow CenturyTel to send traffic north and Qwest to send it south,” Fleck said.
When told of Qwest’s project to build its own redundant fiber optic line, Buck again expressed surprise, given that the Sappho gap project was funded with Qwest money.
Buck represents the 24th District, which covers Clallam and Jefferson and parts of Grays Harbor County.
Fleck, when told of Qwest’s project, said, “That seems to me a little odd. I don’t know what Qwest was thinking.
“This was done with Qwest settlement funds, $1.7 million. I can assure you Qwest was active in this Sappho gap project,” he said.
A 2000 project budget listed a total of $2.4 million — including $1.7 million in Qwest settlement funds — as well as $700,000 from CenturyTel and $6,000 in other private and public funds.
Alternative route
Richardson said Qwest has chosen to fund an alternate route with the Northwest Open Acccess Network down the west side of Hood Canal to create redundancy, she said.
NoaNet is a nonprofit telecommunications company representing public utility districts that have linked their fiber optic networks together.
It supplies telecommunications services to wholesalers at cost.
Once the permits are granted, the equipment can be installed and a redundant fiber optic route, partially using NoaNet cable, should be running by the end of the year, Richardson said.
Tim Grigar, CenturyTel general manager in Gig Harbor, said Tuesday that Qwest hadn’t reached an agreement with his company to use the fiber optic line that closed the gap.
Qwest would have had to buy bandwidth from Century/Tel to get to Aberdeen.
“We need to have Qwest come to us and say let’s create the route going the other way,” Grigar said. “We’ve quoted them prices and never received a response.”
When he was told Wednesday of the Qwest project now under way, Grigar said he hadn’t been aware of it but wasn’t surprised Qwest was pursuing it.
Qwest serves communities such as Quilcene along that western Hood Canal route, so it would provide service along U.S. Highway 101, Grigar said.
“Maybe they’ve been building along there and now are just completing it. Good for them, it should help out everyone up there,” he said.
The making of a gap
The Sappho gap was created when, on the East End of the Peninsula, Qwest installed an 85-mile fiber-optic line from Silverdale to Joyce in October 2000.
On the West End, CenturyTel Communications Inc. installed a fiber-optic trunk from Aberdeen to Forks in January 2001.
The two networks were never connected, leaving the 26-mile gap named after the community of Sappho.
So in April 2001, the Community Economic Revitalization Board approved $1.7 million for the installation of a fiber-optic cable to fill the gap.
The Sappho gap fiber optic cable project consisted of two phases:
* Installing 14.5 miles of CenturyTel line along U.S. Highway 101 between Forks and West Twin Road.
CenturyTel serves telephone and data users in the West End.
* Installing 27 miles of Qwest line along Hoh-Mainline Road from Olympic Corrections Center to U.S. 101.
Qwest serves Jefferson County and eastern and central Clallam County.
If a line were blocked or cut — such as what happened Monday night — data could quickly be sent the other direction at the speed of light.