Swan Valley still searching for cell service

By ALEX STRICKLAND / Bigfork Eagle

Can you hear me now? If you live along the 60-mile stretch of the Swan Highway between Swan Lake and Seeley Lake, the answer is a resounding "No."

For more than a year, area residents have been pushing for a cellular service provider — first Verizon, now Cellular One — to install a cell tower in the Swan. But a situation that looked promising a few months ago could now be in jeopardy thanks to a federal cap on moneys for rural wireless improvements.

Chinook Wireless, now doing business as Cellular One, had a state-approved five year, $5 million plan to expand their rural service infrastructure, according to Sue Ellison, a Swan Lake resident who has led the charge for cell coverage.

The money is federal funding that comes from the Universal Service Funding charges attached to all phone services. Shortly after Cellular One unveiled their plan, the Federal Communication Commission capped such funding, cutting Montana's money for rural wireless infrastructure development by an estimated 20 to 30 percent according to Cellular One.

Cellular One President and CEO Jonathan Foxman said four sites are planned for the Swan Valley, with one at the south end of Swan Lake, one at Van Peak, one in Condon and the last at the north end of Seeley Lake. Whether the newly imposed funding cap will scrap those plans or not, Foxman couldn't say.

"The financial implications of the cap are hard to pre-measure for us," he said. "We are, at this point, still moving forward."

Even if towers are erected in the Swan Valley, however, Foxman said he has concerns for the long-term implications of capping Universal Service Funding.

"We'll have to make choices about what we can afford to do and what we can't," he said. "It raises questions about next year's sites, or the year after that."

Julia Tanner, an attorney for Cellular One, expressed frustration at the FCC's decision to cap funding — the agency is only reducing funds available for rural wireless development, not rural land line development, she said — adding that more cuts could be in the works.

"Every day you're reading about people who are being saved because they were able to call," she said. "We want to fill that need."

Last summer the Swan Lake Community Club sponsored a petition to expand service into the Swan and gathered 2,300 signatures directed at Verizon Wireless, one of Montana's most prevalent carriers. Verizon informed the group that they had no plans to expand in the Swan, so Ellison started looking elsewhere and found Chinook, now Cellular One.

The main cause for concern, she said, stems from a 60-mile "dead zone" between the towns of Swan Lake and Seeley Lake where cell phones do not work. That's a danger not only for stranded motorists or car accident victims, but also for reporting fires or fugitives, as was the case last summer when two inmates who escaped from the Montana State Prison in Deerlodge were on the lam in the Swan.

Ellison said the petition garnered plenty of local signatures, but also a large number of tourists who were surprised to discover that their phones wouldn't work.

Katie Edwards, head of the Bigfork Quick Response Unit made no bones about the communication situation in the dead zone: "It's hell," she said.

Aside from no cell phone coverage, Edwards said radio reception can be spotty and even when radios do work, calls must be directed through Lake County Dispatch, a cumbersome and inefficient way to communicate with their Bigfork base.

"On search and rescue calls, if you don't have a sat(ellite) phone or stand in just the right spot, you can't get out," she said.

Edwards said she knew of instances where injured people had walked from their vehicle to a landline to call for an ambulance and that with the Bigfork QRU covering all the way to Mile Marker 58 past Goat Creek, that extra time added to a lengthy response time can be crucial.

"I always carry a radio when I travel that way for me and my family," she said. "Because you never know."