Kootenet going offline
by Brent Shrum, Kootenai Valley Record
July 29, 2008
Fourteen years after embarking on a mission "to fill the local pothole on the information superhighway," Kootenet is going offline for good.
Lincoln County’s pioneering internet provider will be discontinuing its dialup service within the next few months, as soon as its 500 remaining customers can be given assistance in transferring to another service.
"It’s going to require some tech support," said Kootenet manager Chuck Fahner during a meeting last week with the county commissioners.
Customers will be supported in switching over to another service provider, Fahner said.
He acknowledged that the move will be an inconvenience for many, including those who no longer use the dialup service but have maintained a libby.org e-mail address. With the closure of Kootenet, those addresses will be going away as well.
Kootenet went online in the fall of 1994 as the result of the efforts of the volunteer Lincoln County Technology Group. Key players included former Libby residents Randy Sechrest, an orthopedic surgeon; county librarian Greta Chapman; and retired veterinarian Tony Pajas.
"It definitely provided a service to Lincoln County when nobody else was willing to fund it," said Lincoln County Commissioner John Konzen.
Kootenet peaked at 2,600 users, but with competition from private-sector firms offering higher speed service, that dropped to 1,000 as of June 2007 and now to half that number, Fahner said.
While Kootenet has reduced costs as much as possible, the client base has fallen to a level where the dialup service is no longer self-sustaining, Fahner wrote in a memo to the commissioners.
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Editor’s Note: See the July 28, 2008 edition of the Kootenai Valley Record for the printed version of this story. The Kootenai Valley Record publishes once a week, on Monday, in Libby, Montana. They are a locally owned community newspaper, located at 403 Mineral Avenue in Libby. For in-county and out-of-county subscription information, call 406-293-2424, or e-mail kvrecord@gmail.com.
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