RESOURCE LIBRARY

Why is this Case Important? The cost-sharing approach Rock Island has adopted, whereby groups or associations are assembled to share the network’s middle-mile deployment costs and individual homeowners or business operators pay last-mile costs, has numerous advantages...

Fiber Customers Can Now Get 1,000 Mbps In Their Homes Rock Island Communications, the only provider of fiber-optic broadband in San Juan County, announced last Wednesday that gigabit Internet (1,000 Mbps) is now available to the home. “When we started our efforts just...

Huge Capacity is Ours! The road is now clear for a fiber-optic superhighway. With the threat of a wide-scale Internet outage behind us now, we turn our sights on the new OPALCO submarine cable being installed in the next few weeks between San Juan and Lopez islands....

Here we go... The work to replace the decaying CenturyLink fiber cable that runs from San Juan to Lopez has begun in earnest. Take a deep breath… the moment has arrived. CenturyLink has been taking action in recent weeks to replace their fraying and decaying submarine...

Successful Rural Fiber Broadband DeploymentToo many rural areas in America still have slow broadband service. San Juan Islands (Washington State) used to have only DSL (1 Mbps) service provided by CenturyLink, and spotty cellular phone coverage from AT&T and...

by Leslie Kelly Sounder contributor Living on an island has its advantages. But sometimes there are disadvantages. And internet connection and speed are among them. Rock Island Communications, a division of OPALCO, Orcas Power & Light Cooperative, has plans to...

It is very sad when a resident of the San Juans writes a mean-spirited letter to the editor which promotes boycotting a local business that provides local jobs to hard-working people and provides a high quality, much needed service for myself and fellow islanders. As...

Thank you to the OPALCO Board for their strong leadership With just over one year of being in business, Rock Island Communications has overcome numerous challenges, and has connected close to a thousand islanders to fast, stable and scalable broadband. “In just over...

By Victoria Compton Director, San Juan County Economic Development Council Over a half-century ago, the Carnegie Institute released a report on a contraption that was changing the way America received its information. This report suggested that the technology could...