In August, the DBIUA board decided to stop accepting new members, and those members who were still on the waiting list, we decided to refund their membership fee and not connect them to the network.

We came to this decision for a couple of reasons.

First, while we have been working on our redundant connection with Rockisland, we learned that they are putting in one of their LTE poles over on Blakely.

You may have seen these around in other locations, like at the Obstruction Pass power station, by their offices in Eastsound, over by the transfer station, and at other locations around the county.

These LTE poles are providing T-Mobile cell service as well as providing fixed LTE wireless internet from Rockisland.

This new pole on Blakely should be able to service all of the people on our waiting list.

The other reason we have decided not to expand our membership is our volunteer labor (mostly me- Chris Sutton), does not have enough time to deal with the existing membership and network, let alone install new members.

This doesn’t mean we will be shutting things down and closing up shop. It just means we will be spending our time keeping the current system running.