In December, the Port of Grays Harbor Commissioners adopted an interlocal agreement between the Port and Grays Harbor PUD as part of a joint effort to study the feasibility of the Harbor as a landing point for transoceanic fiber cable.

If Grays Harbor were to serve as a landing point for the fiber cable, which carries telecommunications signals intercontinentaly across stretches of ocean, the cable could potentially connect through the Satsop Business Park and then onto the I-5 corridor.

Alissa Shay, manager of business development at Satsop Business Park, explained that the business park and the PUD are seeking to combine their respective areas of expertise in business development and telecommunications in examining the potential for Grays Harbor to serve as a landing point. Other stakeholders involved are the Quinault Indian Nation, which owns land that could potentially be affected, and Grays Harbor County.

The feasibility study will involve hiring an outside consulting firm, and the county has approved paying for the study’s estimated $80,000 cost out of the Distressed County Sales and Use Tax Fund.

Shay said the need for such fiber cable landing points is being driven by social media and the sharing of large electronic files over the internet.

“There’s demand for transmitting this information that people are generating all over the world,” she said. “The (major tech) companies are always looking for more sites. There’s really only one landing site in Washington state.”

That sole existing landing point is in the Lynnwood area.

In considering whether or not Grays Harbor could serve as a new landing point, there are a variety of unknowns, Shay acknowledged, which the feasibility study would seek to clarify.

One question is where specifically the landing point would be located, as well as exactly how the path of the cable, which would ultimately need to make it to Seattle, would run along I-5. Another is who would ultimately own and maintain the cable and related infrastructure. Other questions to be addressed by the study include the costs involved and who would pay for the project.

In endeavoring to answer these and other questions, the feasibility study will have to look at precedents set in other states.

“A new cable has not been landed in many years in Washington, so it’s not something that anybody has had to permit in many years …,” Shay said.

An exact timeline for the study has not been established, but Shay said proposals likely will be sent out early this month and the hope is to have a consulting firm hired by mid-February. She said the focus this year will be on completing the feasibility study and understanding any obstacles it may identify.