Meadow Creek expands high-speed Internet

Eastport’s Mike Young never figured he’d get local high-speed Internet.

“There’s a reason we moved here,” said Young, who runs an engineer consulting business from his home in remote northern Boundary County, where cell phone service is also ounheard of. “I just never expected there would be enough demand.”

Gary Gage, owner of Meadow Creek Computer Works, last fall began providing high-speed Internet to Eastport. Gage plans to do the same for Porthill by late spring or early summer.

Meadow Creek also plans to introduce a Voice over Internet Protocol system by late spring or early summer. VoIP provides for a telephone service over the Internet for $20 a month.

“If the plan goes through, there will be no federal taxes and all long-distance is free,” Gage said. “The service would be available to anyone who has high-speed Internet.”

Young, who used a dial-up Internet service for a year before going to satellite five years ago, is thankful for Gage’s efforts.

“It’s great that it’s being done locally and not through some government agency, where you don’t know when it’s going to happen,” Young said.

He also no longer has to wait up to a week for a technician should there be a problem with his Internet, as he did with the satellite service.

Gage’s business, which he started 13 years ago selling and repairing computers, continues to grow. He began providing high-speed Internet six years ago. Today it is available throughout the county except for Porthill and the Round Praire area south of Eastport.

An increase in computer sales and repairs along with high-speed Internet has allowed Gage to double his staff; he now employs four full-timers to serve 400 clients.

Liberty Whitener was hired for computer and laptop repairs, and technical support. Bryan Thompson helps with high-speed Internet installations, and home and business support.

“We now have enough employees that we can go to homes and businesses for tutoring, installs of computers, home entertainment centers or setting up home or business networking,” Gage said.

“The last six months has really gotten busy,” he continued.  “We hired two part-time (people) and from day one, they’ve been pretty much full time.”

So far, about 10 from Eastport have signed up for the high-speed Internet through Meadow Creek. The set up fee is $395. The monthly service ranges from $40 to $70. The same fees are expected to apply to Porthill.