Internet upgrades coming to St. Mary
Glacier National Park’s St. Mary area will have broadband Internet access via a new microwave radio antenna tower.
The tower upgrade is part of a larger statewide Montana Public Service Commission requirement mandating CenturyLink to upgrade communications capabilities at its rural exchanges.
The replacement tower will not be a cell tower, nor will it provide cell service; there are no cell towers in Glacier National Park. The tower will also support National Park Service radio communications equipment.
CenturyLink’s Internet service in the greater St. Mary area was not meeting the demands of users in the greater St. Mary area. Connection was limited to cellular modem and satellite technologies for Internet services, and did not include the faster and larger capacity DSL Internet service.
CenturyLink’s new tower must be located within the park because the new system will need to be hardwired to the existing CenturyLink equipment building, which has been in the St. Mary developed area since 1955.
Due to concerns raised by park management about additional communications infrastructure within the park, and to avoid placing an additional tower in the Divide Creek floodplain, the new tower will replace the existing National Park Service radio tower.
The existing 70-foot tall tower will be removed and National Park Service radio equipment will be co-located with CenturyLink’s equipment on the replacement tower.
A right-of-way permit will be issued to CenturyLink to build and operate the tower. It will be an approximately 80-foot tall, three-legged, steel lattice structure with a 6-foot diameter microwave dish. The tower will be supported by an approximately 16-foot by 16-foot concrete footing. Construction will take approximately three weeks.
National Park Service Intermountain Regional Director John Wessels signed the decision on Jan. 22. The environmental impacts associated with the project and consideration of public comments were part of the analysis process.
The decision document is available on the agency’s planning website at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/StMaryTowerFONSI.