The city of Liberty Lake has contracted with Ptera Wireless Inc., the Liberty-Lake based provider of wireless broadband internet and phone services, to upgrade its phone and Internet services, says Steve Wilson, vice president of Ptera. 

The project began last fall and should be completed in about a month, Wilson says. The service valuation for the project will be about $20,000 a year, with the potential for growth in both services and locations.

“We are looking at some time in March. We’re trying to shoot for mid-March, but we’re looking at the end of March, most likely,” he says. 

The installation costs associated with the project won’t be finalized until the installation is complete, says Ptera spokesman Adrian Folsom, but the installation is expected to come in at less than $50,000. 

The first phase of the project involves systems at the police department headquarters, at 23127 E. Mission, and in the neighboring municipal library, at 23123 E. Mission. Liberty Lake City Hall, at 22710 E. Country Vista Drive, also will receive the upgrade. 

Ptera, which is located at 24001 E. Mission in Liberty Lake, will extend and replace some of the existing fiber-optic system that runs underneath the buildings and also will install and support a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone system. 

Fiber-optic broadband Internet works by delivering data over compact glass strands, or fibers. The fibers send signals to a hub inside the building, which in turn delivers the data to a router device via an Ethernet cable. The user’s computers then receive the signal from the router. 

Running Internet solely on fiber optics is a relatively new technology, Wilson says. Fiber Internet is faster than other types, Wilson says, and the system has the capacity to expand to multiple gigabytes of data if needed.  

 VoIP is a technology that takes analog signals, like what is heard during a typical land-line phone call, and changes them to digital data that can be transmitted over the Internet. Because the phone service is via the Internet, no hardware is required to do tasks such as call routing, voice menus, and call forwarding, says Folsom. 

The company was selected to do the project last August after a bidding process, Wilson says. 

Ptera started working in fiber optics about 15 years ago, Folsom says, and currently has 16 full-time employees. It’s been focused on wireless Internet for the last 13 years, and just added its phone services a year and a half ago.