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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Family run J&R changes with the times


Jim Lemm, left, and Ian Caldwell owners of J&R Electronics stand in front of the cat they use to get to remote locations. 
 (Kathy Plonka / The Spokesman-Review)
Jacob Livingston Correspondent

RATHDRUM – The new headquarters of J&R Electronics resembles most other businesses of its type, with computer towers, monitors and high-tech gadgets.

But the wireless services provider breaks the mold behind the shop, where a fleet of service providers rest, including a tank-type, treaded Sno Cat and a four-wheeler -turned-four-treader for traversing the area’s snowcapped peaks and maintaining the company’s mountaintop sites.

With a six-person staff and a 58-year history in North Idaho, the family-owned company, now run by Jim Lemm Jr., has built its customer foundation around the foothills of mountain peaks clustered around the greater Rathdrum Prairie area.

A dozen or so peaks have been outfitted with radio towers, which Lemm Jr.’s father helped erect in the 1950s, or with Internet satellite capability, as modern mechanics allows high-speed connections to creep farther out into rural areas.

“It was a natural migration for us,” Lemm Jr. said of J&R’s move closer to Rathdrum from its former location in Dalton Gardens.

With Rathdrum Mountain the primary source of the company’s wireless network, “we wanted to be up here. It’s where most of our customer base is located,” said Ian Caldwell, who has been with the business since 2000 and now is its vice president. “It’s where we needed to be.”

But getting where J&R “needed to be” from the North Idaho corporation’s modest beginnings in Kellogg has taken the Lemm family on a cross-Panhandle trek of former store locations, including Sandpoint and Moscow.

The business reached a peak in the number of stores after adding cell phone service in the 1990s. However, Caldwell said, having several stores “just wasn’t making financial sense.”

Though J&R still offers cell phone service and electronics, the owners decided to establish a new identity at the end of the decade by building on the past.

On four radio-tower-equipped mountaintops, J&R Electronics attached Internet access points, allowing it to offer high-speed wireless Internet access via Motorola’s wireless Canopy network to an area sidelined by the majority of providers.

“That’s really our market – the people who live outside mainstream services,” said Caldwell.

With four mountain access points aligned in a row from Mica Peak to the south to Hoodoo Mountain to the north, J&R’s customers have grown to include the Lakeland School District, several local businesses and residential homes.

The Ethernet-based broadband service is synchronized so that expected bandwidth is mapped out ahead of time, with no collisions between customers or sudden disconnections without the constraints of a traditional infrastructure.

“We try to keep our customers within 10 miles of the sites,” Caldwell said.

But even modern gadgets need constant care to run smoothly. Because the summit sites require upkeep, especially during winter when ice can coat antennas and crust over cables, making them thicker than a football, the electronics crew decided a move was in order.

“I’d say it probably took a year or more to find a place we liked,” Caldwell said.

After spotting the open space alongside state Highway 53 in Rathdrum – which featured room for offices and a shop as well as a backyard big enough for its winter vehicles – J&R Electronics moved its headquarters to the foothills of Rathdrum Mountain in January.

Although the Ethernet-based wireless service is a key component of the electronics dealer’s service, the company also offers radio communications, engineering and construction services and global satellite phones and service.

“It’s been so much fun to be out here,” Lemm Jr. said while standing in the electronics-laden hub of the new store. “The community is really supportive, the city is very cooperative and we have a large user base already here.”

For the semi-retired Jim Lemm Sr., adapting to changing times and maintaining the family business’s place as one of the most-experienced wireless companies in the Northwest have been long-term goals since he left the military in the 1950s to start J&R Electronics.

“I think (Jim Jr.) has done a good job,” he said. “It feels good to see him carry on the family business.”