County signs deal to unclog court internet

Whitman County officials Monday approved a new contract for internet service to the county’s courthouse complex.

Information Technology Director Chris Nelson presented commissioners with a three-year contract that would increase the county’s internet capacity more than 13-fold.

Large projects needing to be done by both her department and the auditor’s department require the county to have more bandwidth.

“Our internet is used by everybody on a daily basis, so it’s important that we have something that will support being used by our 200-some computers at once,” she said. “Things have just started to get clogged up.”

Auditor Eunice Coker needs a faster connection to transmit historic documents her staff has scanned to the Secretary of State’s electronic archives.

Nelson said the current DSL connection through CenturyLink gives the county the ability to transfer 768 kilobytes of data per second. New server Orbitcom will up that 13 times to 10 megabytes per second.

Whitman County will pay $780 per month under the 36-month Orbitcom contract, a $2,160 annual increase over the current $600 a month CenturyLink deal.

Nelson noted Orbitcom is planning to lease high-speed fiber optic cables in the new line being laid by the Port of Whitman and NOANet from Clarkston to Spokane.