Central Oregon’s digital divide is closing.

The days of phone and Internet service interruption may be history at the end of this month when Qwest’s $70 million rural technology upgrade is complete.

The company’s ”self-healing” fiber optic circle, the Central Oregon Ring, is scheduled for completion soon, making it possible to instantly reroute voice and data traffic in the event that a fiber optic cable is cut or damaged.

That means credit card and ATM machines work, phones ring and the Internet stay up when a line is knicked.

”There is one road in and one road out of Central Oregon for voice and data traffic, and if there is a cut anywhere on that path, Central Oregon can be totally isolated,” said Mary Healy, a spokesperson for Qwest.

Once the fiber optic ring is in place, computers will be able to detect whether there is a degradation of light, in which case they will reroute voice and data traffic within 50 mili-seconds of a disruption.

”This is really a one of a kind network,” Healy said. ”No other state will be as complete as Oregon.”

To understand what the Central Oregon Ring will mean to businesses, meet Richard Hebert, chief executive officer of iSKY.

Twice the CEO has had to sit with iSKY’s board of directors and explain to them why financial statements fell short of expectations. The reason, Hebert told them, was a disruption in telephone service caused by a severed fiber optic line.

For a company that makes its revenue from inbound and outbound contact management with customers of Fortune 500 companies, the disruption was costly – in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

”It was a major bone of contention,” he said.

Plagued with costly glitches in long-distance phone service, the company had to dish out even more money to configure redundancy through satellites and microwave dishes.

But for assurances from Economic Development for Central Oregon (EDCO) that a fiber optic infrastructure would one day be in place, iSKY would have given Bend five seconds of consideration before deciding not to locate here, Hebert said. About 250 jobs, then, would have been taken elsewhere.

”You can’t have a customer action (center) in a place where you don’t have a fiber loop,” Hebert said.

”Frankly, we have also lost some business.”

When the company tried to solicit new clients, they were dubious, he said, because of concerns with telecommunications reliability.

Said Roger Lee, executive director of EDCO, ”I think it will not only happen to recruit new companies, but there will be expansions. …The reliability factor is just going to increase their interest and utilization of the Central Oregon workforce.”

Besides ensuring reliability, the fiber optic ring will also mean that every Qwest central office will become equipped to offer digital subscriber services (DSL), bringing high-speed Internet access to both urban and rural areas of the state.

Qwest, which both installed new lines and leased existing lines owned by other telecom companies, began work on the project following the passage of Senate Bill 622 in 1999.

The legislation established a fund that made financial support available to communities showing a need for increased bandwidth, route diversity and access to advanced telecom services for their residents.

Qwest was the only company to participate in SB 622, providing the $70 million needed for the project in exchange for freedom from traditional rate-of-return regulation.

Through the bill, the Connecting Oregon Communities Advisory Board (COCAB) then solicited project proposals from local groups around the state. In this region, the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council (COIC) spearheaded the effort.

”It has been clear for a number of years that the biggest issue out there in telecommunications is the reliability of existing services, and that can best be accommodated through route diversity,” said Andrew Spreadborough, program administrator for COIC.

Over the last two years, there have been five or six cuts that knocked out communications, sometimes for hours at a time, he said.

In most cases the lines are cut when a contractor or farmer digs without knowing the line exists.

The infrastructure will be an important improvement for distressed communities like Prineville or LaPine where unemployment rates are high and there is plenty of available industrial land for businesses to locate, Spreadborough said.

”It’s a necessary infrastructure, like water or service roads, and if a business is going to consider locating here, it just needs to be in place,” he said.

The statewide project will result in a total of five ”self-healing” rings.

The Central Oregon Ring will connect the region by way of Portland, Madras, Redmond, Bend, LaPine, Salem and back to Portland, and will include a ”mini-ring” in Prineville for route diversity. Fiber connections to business parks in Madras and Redmond will provided, as well as voice mail in Prineville and Madras.

Finally, high-speed data switches will be installed in Bend, Redmond and Madras, giving all of Central Oregon access to the data network. Companies transmitting data traffic right now, Patrick McClarney, telecommunications manager for the state’s Economic and Community Development Department, explained, have to pay a mileage fee for high-speed data transport through large pipes that run into Portland.

Installing data switches ”brings a remote community closer to the data network and reduces the cost of connections into the data network,” he said. For large users of data, such as the banking industry, vacation reservation hubs, medical centers and companies with multiple distribution centers, it will save money.

Lisa Rosetta can be reached at 541-617-7812 or at lrosetta@bendbulletin.com.