New project manager
As most of you know, our contractor for the fiber build is Atlantic Engineering. They have done an amazing job so far and are moving right along. But there is about to be a change in staffing at AEG and I wanted to give you an update. From the start of the project, the project manager has been Mark Parr. Mark has been with AEG a number of years and has several municipal fiber builds under his belt. But AEG has had a new project manager in Salisbury learning the trade from Mark and he is increasingly taking on more of the day to day responsibility for Salisbury. So I wanted to introduce him to you.
His name is Jay Thomas. Jay graduated from West Point in April 2004. He served in the Army for five years as an
AEG's new prolect manager, Jay Thomas
Air Defence Officer. While in the Army, Jay attended the University of Texas at El Paso where he got a Master in Project Management. After leaving the Army, Jay went to work for AEG in April of this year. He started in Salisbury on April 13th. Jay received his Master of Project Management certificate in May.
While at West Point, Jay played for the Army football team. To prove the old adage that it’s a small world, Army used to play East Carolina University in football. If you know me, you know that I’m a big ECU fan and go to most home games. So it was interesting in talking to Jay to find out that he played in the game when Army played ECU in Greenville. So I got to see Jay play football, even though at the time I didn’t know him. The good thing is, ECU won that game.
Anyway, if you get the chance to meet Jay, I hope you give him a big welcome because he is going to be a great addition to the project.
Newest Employee
It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted anything. I’m sorry about that but I was on vacation last week and the week before that was really busy. But I hope I can get back to a fairly regular schedule.
We now have our third employee in the Broadband Services Department. His name is Barry King and he started
Barry (on right) standing with David Richards
on July 13th. So he’s been with us for a little over three weeks. Barry is our Services Deilvery Manager and will be responsible for the outside plant (the fiber cable from the headend to the curb), the drop cables (the fiber cable from the curb to the house/business), and the wiring inside the house. Basically it will be Barry’s job to make sure that our subscribers have the best experience they can get.
Barry comes to Salisbury from LexCom Communications, one of the service providers in Davidson County. He was responsible for the deployment of cable TV services for LexCom for the last twelve years. Before that he worked for Time Warner so Barry has over 25 years in the cable business.
Once the fiber plant is finished and the headend has been constructed, Barry will be hiring two to three installers and contracting with another six to twelve installers to begin running the fiber to the homes/businesses and installing the ONT (the box that connects the fiber to wiring at the house). Since Barry will be responsbile for the user experinece, he will also be in charge of supervising the Network Operations Center which will house the Technical Service Representatives (TSR) that will be responsbile for monitoring the video signals and for setting up new accounts. The TSR’s will also provide Tier 2 support. This means when you call for help, you will first be connected to the Customer Service Representatives (CSR) that will be able to answer calls such as “how do I record a program”. This is considered a Tier 1 support call. But if the question is technical, such as “I’ve noticed channel 23 has a little pixalation”, then that call will go to Tier 2 support.
Barry’s office number is 704-216-7572. His cell phone number is 704-975-7854 and his email address is bking@salisburync.gov. We have also set up a hot line number, 704-216-7567. This number rings on all our phones so someone should be available to answer. If not, the voice mail goes to Barry. So if you have any questions or would like to discuss an issue with someone, give Barry a call. You will enjoy getting to know Barry.
Construction Update
I wanted to give a quick update this morning on the fiber construction.
- As I think I’ve mentioned before, the city has been divided into 68 areas that are defined by the LCP (Local Convergence Point) cabinets. These cabinets are where the fiber from the headend connect to a device called a splitter. The splitters then connect to the fibers that run to the houses/businesses. The preliminary design for all 68 areas has been completed. This design is done by AEG’s Engineering staff in Braselton, GA. Once the preliminary design is ready, AEG staff rides out the areas to make sure the design actually fits the area. In other words, the design may look good on paper but may could be improved in the field by making a few changes, this is what the local AEG staff is looking for. Once AEGhas signed off on the design, city staff rides out the areas with AEG and then signs off. Once this occurs, that area is ready for construction. At this point, there are 52 areas ready for construction.
- As each area is designed, one of the key elements of the design is the placement of the LCP cabinet. Again, all the fiber for an area runs from the cabinet to each and every house/business, even vacant lots. So it helps to have the cabinet as centrally located in each area as possible. As customers are signed up and service is turned on, the installers will have to go to the cabinets to connect each customer up. So it is also important to have the cabinets located in an area where they are easily accessible but not in a high traffic area. At this point, the placement for all 68 cabinets have been determined. Three of the cabinets will be located in an historic district. These three locations have been approved by the Historic Preservation Committee.
- Once construction begins in each area, the LCP cabinets are installed. Each cabinet sits on top of a large underground vault. These vaults are where the fiber splices are located. Each cabinet comes “prewired” with the internal fibers ready for connection. The vault has a split cover with the cabinet mounted to one half. The other half can be removed so access to the fiber is available. So far 6 cabinets and vaults have been installed. To see what one of the cabinets look like in the field, check this picture of David.
David Richards next to LCP cabinet
- Since the city is not an electric city and therefore don’t own any poles, we have to mount our fiber on Duke Engergy and AT&T poles. Just about all poles have to have some work done to them to make room for our fiber. This is called make ready work. AEG looks at the poles in each area and determines what make ready work they think needs to be done to make the pole available. This is then submitted to Duke and AT&T for their review. This is submitted in books, one book for each area. So far 48 books have been submitted to Duke for their review. Another 8 books will be submitted by July 15th. At this point, Duke has approved 32 books, AT&T has approved 8. (I don’t want to imply AT&T has been slow getting the books back. On the contrary, they have been good to work with so far. The books were just given to AT&T later since we had to get a pole attachment agreement with them in place.) Duke requires all material required for make ready to be supplied by them. At this point, we have received material for 4 areas.
- AEG is subcontracting with Utililines to do the make ready work. They have two types of crews, light and heavy. The light crews perform the light make ready such as installing new riser guards (the piece of metal that protects cable as it goes up the side of the pole) or raising drip loops (the small coils of cable that are attached to the poles). Some poles just have so much existing cable on them that room can’t be make available so those poles have to be swapped out with taller poles. This is the work of the heavy crews. The light crews have been in town for the last three weeks, the heavy crews just started last week.
- Once aerial construction begins (mounting the fiber to the poles), the work should proceed amazingly fast. So AEG is waiting until enough make ready work has been completed so that the aerial crews don’t have to start just to have to wait. So aerial construction won’t begin for another few weeks.
- Underground construction has been completed in 12 areas. Another 4 areas are under construction this week. Of the 68 areas, 22 are aerial only, the remaining 46 have some or are all underground.
- Splicing (where the where the separate fiber cables are joined together) has started in those areas where underground work has been completed.
We’ve started giving an update to the city council at each council meeting so I’ll be making updates on construction here along the same schedule. So I should have an update sometime in the first and third week of each month.
Video programming and channel lineup
We had a comment posted last week that asked about the video plans that were going to be offered. Actually the comment was…
What kind of plans will be available? or is it to early to ask?
The answer, unfortunately, is yes, it’s too early to say. To better answer this question, let me try to explain the challenge we face with video. The content providers (ESPN, Disney, etc) make their programs available using satellites. I don’t know the exact number of satellites used, but there’s more than 60 satellites circling the globe used for content. A content provider leases space on a satellite and uses it to broadcast it’s programming. Some of this content is free, and is called free-to-air. Most of it requires a subscription though. The programs that require subscriptions are encrypted, or scrambled, so that anyone receiving the program must be authorized to use it.
There are basically three ways to receive this programming. One is to use a company that operates what is known as a “super headed”. In this scenario, the company builds a headend where they receive the programming from the providers they want to carry, bundle it up into one channel, and then send it to their customers for distribution. This means they install satellite dishes to receive the programming, process the signals from the satellite, encode the programming so that only their customers can use it, then they send it back up to another satellite for distribution. All you need to receive their programming is a smaller satellite dish and just enough equipment to receive their one signal, and separate it into the individual channels. All the encoding and encryption is already done at the super headend. The problem with this type of service is you only get the channels they provide and you generally have to use the equipment they choose to use. This equipment is usually some of the less expensive equipment and thus doesn’t provide a great viewing experience. But this type of service means you don’t have to invest in your own headend and thus your capital costs, the cost of purchasing and installing equipment, is lower.
The second and third way is similar in that you have to build your own headend but you get the license to use the programming differently. In both these cases, you have to install one or more satellite dishes to receive the programming; buy and install all the satellite receivers, encoders, etc; and buy and install all the digital rights management and conditional access systems. These last two items are the equipment that encrypts the programming so that only those people subscribing to your service can view it. It is a requirement of the content providers so that they can be assured of getting their money for everyone viewing their programs. The difference in these two ways is how the content is licensed.
In one method, the city would negotiate and sign a seperate contract with each provider. So the city would have to have a contract with ESPN, Disney, etc. This is a long and hard process, especially since the city won’t have an especially large number of customers, as compared to Time Warner or AT&T. So when it comes to negotiating a price, the larger incumbents are going to get better pricing. They are going to get quicker response from them also.
So we have decided to use the third method to get our content and that is to join a co-operative. There are three co-ops and we have chosen to join the National Rural Telephone Cooperative (NRTC). This means the NRTC is negotiating contracts with the programmers on their members behalf and can bring to the table a much larger number of subscribers. The disadvantage to this is we are somewhat limited to the programming that the NRTC has available. I say somewhat limited because with this method, we can still go directly to a provider and negotiate a separate contract; it would just be more expensive than if we used the NRTC. We can do this because we are building our own headend and can install the equipment required to receive each and every channel.
Lastly, there is the problem of providing local broadcasts. These are the channels such as WBTV and WSOC. These channels are received “over the air”, meaning we will have several antennas that will receive the signal from the broadcasters, and then process them to put them into the format we need to send out with all the other channels. We have to negotiate and sign contracts with the individual broadcasters to provide these channels. These channels are not a part of the NRTC channels. We have not contacted the local providers at this time but will do so shortly.
Since we are now members of the NRTC, we know which channels they can offer and we are looking to see if there are other channels we may want to provide. We are also looking to see which local channels we want to offer.
So this has been a long discussion just to say that we still don’t know exactly which channels we plan to offer and how we will bundle them. This is something that we are currently working on, we are just waiting right now on the NRTC to finish processing our membership. Once they have finished,we will be assigned an account representative that will work with us to build our channel lineup and bundles, including local channels. Once we have this information, we will start to make it available to the public. I’ll keep you updated on this process as it goes along.
This is one of the more involved decisions we’ve had to make and it’s hard to explain it in a such short discussion. I’ll probably expand on this topic in latter posts. Again, if you have any questions about any of this, please let me know.
An Email from Robert
I got an email from Robert today with the following comments:
________________________________________________________
I have looked through the Salisbury website trying to find more information about the FTTH program, but I can’t seem to find anything.
Time Warner is presently offering attractive packages to lock in lower rates for 2 yrs. I would like to support the city in this new program at my home and my business, but I have not seen or can I find any information that tells me:
1. When the service will start
2. Where in the city will it be offered. My road is (I removed the name of the road. Mike) Avenue- will it have service and when
3. Pricing
I have talked with many friends who are facing this same dilemma. It would seem important for the city to get this information out to the public so as to keep them from signing longer term agreements.
If I am sending this to the wrong department, I would appreciate either forwarding it to the appropriate department or letting me know the appropriate contact person.
Thank you for any help and information that you can provide.
________________________________________________________
Up to this point we have been reluctant to say a lot about the project because we still had a lot of decisions to make that would impact when the service would be offered. We didn’t want to say we would be available by such and such a date only to find out later that we couldn’t meet that date and make a lot of people mad. But things are starting to come together and I think we can offer a schedule that we should be able to meet.
Right now it looks like the fiber construction will be completed by December. But the one point that we still aren’t real clear on is the availability of our new building. We can’t start installing the electronics, the equipment that will actually allow us to offer service, until the building is finished. Well, not the entire building, just the part that we are calling the headend, where the electronics will be located. This part of the building is going to be built separately and should be ready by the first of January. If that holds true, then we can start installing everything middle of January, have everything ready to start testing by the end of March, and run a beta test of the equipment with a hundred or so customers for 6 to 8 weeks. So based on this, we would start offering service to the general public sometime around the first of June.
This may change but if it does, I don’t think it will slip much. Again, everything is based on the availability of the headend.
We are running fiber past every home and business in Salisbury so it will be available to anyone that wants to sign up. When someone does sign up, we will then run a piece of fiber from the pole or underground vault that is nearest to them. We will have to mount a box called an ONT (Optical Network Terminal) on each home/business that connects to the fiber and converts the light into electrical pulses that your TV and computers can read. The ONT has the capability to use the existing wire or cable in the houses in most cases so we shouldn’t have to rewire most houses.
I still can’t talk about pricing at this point because we are still negotiating for our video content, our telephone, and data services. We’re shooting to be around 15% lower than the incumbents normal pricing but Time Warner may lower pricing as soon as we start our service so I don’t know how close we will actually be to that figure. I can assure you we will be as low as possible plus you won’t get better service anywhere else. Also, we aren’t going to require a contract.
I think I answered most of your questions. If not, don’t hesitate to get back in touch.
At this point Robert replied with the following:
________________________________________________________
Thank you, Mr. Crowell, for the update. From your note it sounds like you are not planning to role out the product one neighborhood at a time, but lay all the cable and when you go live it will be available to everyone at the same time.
________________________________________________________
My response to this email was:
You’re correct that when we start offering service, we will probably open it up to all residents. To be honest, I would rather have been able to go neighborhood by neighborhood but the building didn’t allow that.
This was the end of our “discussion” but I wanted to expand on some of the things I said to Robert. First, I’m still not real comfortable detailing our plans in public, usually you don’t want your competitors to know your plans, but I think this time it’s more important for you to know what we’re doing so you can make plans. Second, I’m not sure how many people will catch the fact that if you sign up for service, and your existing service is underground, we will have to come back to your property and install another piece of fiber in your yard. We wil be just as careful not to damage your yard then as AEG has been now. We’re still trying to decide how to install this fiber but we’re going to chose the method that will be the most cost effective while doing as little damage as we can. Third, the reason I wished we could have offered service neighborhood by neighborhood is a little complicated but I”ll try to explain.
If we could have offered service as a neighborhood was completed, we could have had a controlled rollout. We would have been able to have a manageable backlog meaning no one would have had to wait a long time to be connected. But with the service being available to everyone at the same time, we could have a very large backlog, one that will be hard to manage. The last thing we want is for someone to sign up for service just to be told “We’ll get to you in 4 to 5 months”. So we have a lot of planning to do to make sure this doesn’t happen. I’m not sure what the final plan will be, but we’ll make it as fair to everyone as we can.
Finally, Robert made a good point that information about our project has been hard to find. Again, one reason we were keeping quite was we didn’t know what to say. There’s a lot of decisions to be made in a project like this and we’re just now making a lot of them. Also, we didn’t want our competitors knowing what we were doing. But we’ve decided to try harder to make information available, so we have implemented several ideas to make this happen. This is one reason for this blog. It gives us a way provide a daily update. We are also updating the city’s website to provide a link to this blog along with providing a section where information will be posted. We are also going to be running ads in the Salisbury Post where we will address a particular topic each week. If you have any other ideas for how we can update everyone, please let me know. We will look at any ideas.
That’s it for tonight. If you have any questions about any of this, or about anything else, don’t hesitate to let me know. Thanks.
Damaged Irrigation Systems
I got a call from Tanya today saying her irrigation system had been cut. AEG had been in her neighborhood a week or so ago but she didn’t realize her irrigation system wasn’t working until she turned it on over the weekend. When she did, she noticed a gush of water coming out of the ground. She was asking did she have to have the system repaired and cover the cost or was the city still responsible since a couple of weeks had gone by. So I thought I would try to explain why irrigation gets cut, along with phone and cable.
The NC Legislature passed a law known as the Underground Damage Prevention Act that requires contractors planning on installing underground pipe or cable to call for location services. There is an organization named the NC One-Call Center (http://www.ncocc.org) that provides these services for contractors and homeowners. So once AEG determines which neighborhoods they will be working in the following week, they call and ask for existing cable and pipes to be located. The One-Call Center has a list of all the existing utilities in each area and they then call and report that work is going to occur and gives the addresses for that work. Then each provider has the responsibility to go out and mark their lines. You can see these markings all around town for previous work done. If you see various colors of paint on the ground running along the road or street with a mark about every three feet, this is a result of the location services.
When a contractor installs cable or pipe, they make sure that there is some form of metal that runs along with the pipe or cable. In the case of plastic pipe or conduit, a copper wire is placed alongside the pipe. When the pipe or cable needs to be located, a box is attached that sends a signal down the wire that can be heard by a special device, sort of like a metal detector. As the signal is heard, a mark is place on the ground. Each type of service is identified by a different color. For example, electrical service is identified by red paint, water lines by blue, and communication cables by orange. You can see a chart of all the colors at http://www2.ncocc.org/ncocc/colorcodechart.htm.
Once AEG gets on-site, they determine where they can install the city fiber without disturbing any existing cables or pipes. They are required to stay within the city’s right of way, which varies street to street. If this system worked perfectly each time, then existing cables would not be cut. However, no system is perfect and this one is no different. What happens is sometimes the various providers fail to send someone out within the required time to locate and AEG then incorrectly assumes no existing lines exist. Or when the service is located, they mark the lines incorrectly and then AEG incorrectly assumes the lines are in one place but later find they were actually in another place. Sometimes, the right of way is just so crowded with existing cable that there is very little room to install more. In all these instances, the existing lines stand a chance of getting cut through no fault of AEG. If a line is cut, then AEG has to notify the appropriate provider and they are then required to come out and fix the problem.
The locater system also has another inherent flaw in that drop cables, cables running to the individual homes/businesses aren’t required to be located. Also, irrigation systems aren’t required to have copper wire installed along with the pipes and so can’t be located. Therefore when AEG is installing the fiber, it is relatively easy to cut these drop cables and irrigation systems. The crews carry various supplies to fix these problems when they occur but sometimes that don’t have the correct piece and so they have to call the appropriate provider to correct the problem. For irrigation systems, they sometimes don’t realize they have cut the pipes until sometime later when the homeowner turns the system on. Once they have been notified, they will come back and correct the problem. At no point is the homeowner or business owner required to pay to have any of these problems fixed. Unfortunately, it may take a little time to arrange for these problems to be fixed, but they are always fixed as soon as possible.
I hope this has explained how existing services can be cut and what happens if they are cut. If you have questions, or you need to report a cut, then call Mark Parr with AEG or me. Mark’s number is (678) 897-0105 and my office number is 704-216-7574. If you get either of our voice mail, please leave a mesage with your contact info and your address and someone will get right back with you.
If you are planning on doing some work around your home, especially in the right of way and are going to be digging a hole using some type of powered equipment, maybe a small backhoe you rented, you are also required to call for location services. The number to call is 1-800-632-4949 or you can just dial 811.
Thanks.
Questions about Franchises
I recently received an email asking a question, actually three questions, about the existing Time Warner franchise. I said I would answer questions submitted by email here so everyone could benefit. So here are the answers.
The email came from John who said…
I saw an advertisement in the paper and on TV today about a Windstream bundle. We currently have a TWC bundle that is outrageous and costs us about $150 per month. I called Windstream and they say they cannot come into Salisbury except for one certain subdivision. Windstream’s cost would have been roughly one-half on TWC’s rate. Then I noticed on my last TWC bill that it says they have a franchise with the City of Salisbury.
I have a few questions:
1. Is it true that they have an exclusive franchise with the city?
2. If so, when did this franchise begin and how long does it last?
3. Why would the council, given the soaring rate of change in this industry, lock-in with only one provider?
Up until recently, Time Warner did have a local franchise agreement with the city but it was NOT an exclusive agreement. Any provider that wanted to do business in Salisbury could have gotten a franchise. But since Time Warner was the only provider in town offering video, it appeared they did have an exclusive agreement. However, last year the state passed a new State Franchise Law (at the urging of Time Warner, AT&T, and other incumbents) that says basically if competition does exist, then any existing provider can apply for a state franchise that will take the place of the local franchise. In Salisbury, AT&T has started installing their new service named U-verse so that allowed TWC to apply for the state franchise. This just occurred within the last few weeks, so now the local franchise is no longer in effect.
While the local franchise was in place, the city could intervene with TWC concerning complaints. That was the reason TWC printed the city’s number on their bills. But now that the state franchise is in place, any complaints will now be handled by the State Attorney General’s office. The city now has no way to make sure TWC, nor AT&T once they begin offering service, is meeting the needs of the citizens and providing good service.
As far as Windstream not being able to offer service in Salisbury, that has more to do with Windstream not having cables or fiber in town than any thing else. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) historically has set rules and regulations saying what telephone providers could and couldn’t do. They essentially divided the countryside into areas and gave telephone companies exclusive rights to offer telephone service in those areas. The large incumbents, like BellSouth, concentrated mainly in the cities and more densely populated areas, the smaller companies picked up the remaining areas. In some cases, the smaller companies would pick up a new subdivision to provide service to. This is probably what happened in Salisbury where Windstream told you that could provide service to just one neighborhood.
Splitter Update
I had someone point out to me that I missed one important aspect of our network design in my post from this afternoon. I explained how the city had gone from using 32 way splitters to 16 way and how that change was going to allow the city to provide even higher bandwidth to our subscribers. But if you had paid really close attention, you would have noticed one interesting aspect of that discussion/
Earlier I explained what an OLT was and how one port, or connection, fed one splitter. This splitter could feed up to 32 homes/businesses if it was a 32 way splitter or 16 homes if it was a 16 way splitter. What maybe wasn’t quite as obvious is that this could lead to a much greater cost to the city.
Say we have 320 customers we want to sign up. If we use 32 way splitters, then we would need to use 10 ports on the OLT (again, each port can feed 32 homes/businesses). But if we use 16 way splitters, then we would need 20 ports. We haven’t bid out the GPON equipment yet so I can’t say what each port costs, but they are not inexpensive. So it would look like the 16 way splitters will almost double our costs. But what we are going to do is use 2 way splitters in the headend to feed two 16 way splitters in the field. This means we will effectively still be using 32 way splitters (one port on the OLT will feed a 2 way splitter that will then feed two 16 way splitters) in the beginning thus saving money. But once the number of subscribers grows or the demand for bandwidth increases, then we will be able to remove the 2way splitters. By this point we will have enough subscribers, and will be making enough money, to afford the costs of the extra OLT ports. This provides something similar to a “pay as you go (or grow)” plan.
I know this is more technical than most of you want to know, and I’ve tried to make it as easy to understand as I could. What I’m trying to show is that a lot of thought has gone into the design of the network and we’re trying to do this as inexpensively as we can. The network as it’s being built, can grow with the city and we can spread the cost over several years. Yet when we’re five or ten years into the project, the city will still have a state of the art network that will have the bandwidth the users want.
If you want to discuss this further, and I can’t believe anyone would, then let me know and I’ll do my best to confuse you even further. I’ll try not to make my next posts quite as boring.
Tuesday’s Council Meeting Updated
One other item that I mentioned at Tuesday’s council meeting that I forgot to mention in my last post, was the discussion about Salisbury using 1×16 splitters in place of 1×32. I didn’t really forget it, it was just late and my mind was too fuzzy to try and explain it. So I thought I would try today.
Salisbury is using a technology called GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) to provide service. In a GPON system, a strand of fiber leaves the headend and runs to a LCP (Local Convergent Point) cabinet. In the cabinet is a device called a splitter. This is a passive device (doesn’t require electricity) that takes the lightwave signal it receives and splits it. The GPON standard allows for up to 64 way splitters. We were originally going to use 32 way splitters. At the urging of AEG, we have now decided to use 16 way splitters.
I know this doesn’t mean a lot right now but let me see if I can explain it. A GPON system has two major pieces of equipment, the OLT (Optical Line Terminal) and ONT (Optical Network Terminal). The OLT is located in the headend and the ONT at the homes/businesses. The OLT is the device that takes signals from all the electronics that generate the video, phone, Internet and any other service we may provide, and turns it into light pulses that travel down the fiber. Each port (a connection that feeds one fiber) can provide 2.5G of bandwidth downstream and 1.2G upstream. Each port feeds one splitter so if we were using 32 way splitters, then each home could receive 75Meg down, 37.5Meg up. Since we try and talk about symmetric bandwidth (the upstream and downstream bandwidth being the same) and we try to round down to a number ending with a zero, we usually say we can provide up to a 30Meg symmetric connection using 32 way splitters. You can see we can offer a much greater speed than we are actually saying. We just don’t want to get into the same habit as the current providers by saying we can provide high speeds when we really can’t.
Now if we use 16 way splitters in place of 32 way, then the numbers change rather dramatically. If you now take the 2.5G available downstream bandwidth from one port and divide by 16, you get 150Meg down and 75Meg up. So with 16 way splitters we can offer a 70Meg symmetric connection. This means we can provide enough bandwidth for now and in the foreseeable future. This doesn’t mean you have to sign up for this speed. We are going to offer in our base package a 10Meg symmetric service. If you want more speed, there will be options for additional bandwidth. As a side note we will also have ONT’s that can deliver 1Gigabit Per Second to businesses/schools and any high demand customers.
Just like with computers, the GPON system is continually being improved. Industry is already working on equipment that can provide 10G speeds so at some point, all we will have to do is replace the OLT and ONT’s and we will be able to provide even higher speeds. The good thing is, the OLT and ONT’s don’t have to be all replaced at the same time, we can do it over several years as the demand occurs. This is the reason we say FTTH, especially the fiber, is future proof.
This is already too long, so I will wait until another day to discus what the ONT does and how it works. I know you can hardly wait.
Council Meeting June 16th
At today’s council meeting, I gave a quick update on our project. And I do mean quick, I can talk fast if and when I need to. So I thought I would try to write down what I said.
Atlantic Engineering, our contractor for the fiber design/build, has finished preliminary design and has divided the city into 68 areas. These areas are defined by LCP (Local Convergence Point) cabinets. A LCP cabinet is where a fiber from the headend (the central office where the electronics are housed) connects to a device called a splitter. The splitter takes the one strand of fiber and divides it into multiple fibers running to the homes/businesses. We’re using 286 strand cabinets but we’re only designing for around 250 fibers so we will have extra capacity for the future. The cabinet locations for all 68 areas have been selected and approved by the city. Of these 68, 3 were in the historic district for which we have received approval from the Historic Preservation Committee. AEG is now completing the design for the LCP areas. To date, they have finished the design on 47 areas. Once the design is completed by AEG, city staff has to ride out the area to approve the design. So far the city has approved 37 areas, leaving 10 areas yet to be approved.
Once an area has been approved by the city, AEG takes a picture of any poles that will be used in the construction. They also measure all the existing cables and wires attached to each pole. These pictures and measurements go into a book, one for each area. These books have to be reviewed by Duke Energy, since they own most of the poles the city will use. Some poles from AT&T will be used, but not many. Once Duke gets these books, they walk out the pole lines, checking the books for accuracy. In the pole drawings, AEG will have indicated what cables/wires need to be moved to make room for the city’s fiber. In some instances, there won’t be any available space so the pole will have to be swapped out. Once Duke reviews the books, they determine what “make ready” work is required for each pole and make a materials list showing the material required. The books are then returned to AEG and make ready work is scheduled. So far AEG has submitted 39 books for Duke’s review and 28 have been returned.
AEG has subcontracted with Utililines, an approved contractor with Duke, to do the make ready work. Utililines started work in Salisbury this week and is completing about 20 poles a day. They should be finished with the first 28 areas during the next few weeks. So far Utililines has 2 light crews in town, they will be bringing 2 heavy crews to town in the next few weeks. A light crew does the simple make ready work, the heavy crews will do the pole swap outs. Once Utililines has finished an area, then Time Warner and AT&T has to come in and finish any make ready work required of them. Once that’s finished, AEG is ready to hang fiber. Right now they expect to start hanging fiber during the first week of July. They expect to bring in 2 crews to hang fiber and 2 to 4 splicers to begin splicing the fiber.
Of the 68 areas, around 22 are mostly aerial with very little underground. Most other areas have a combination of aerial and underground. AEG is installing the city’s fiber in conduit. You have probably seen big spools of orange stuff around where AEG has been working. This orange stuff is 2″ conduit. The advantage of conduit is it provides protection against digging and allows for additional fiber to be added at a later date without having to bury more fiber and therefore having to tear up yards again. So right now when AEG says an area is complete, they mean the conduit is complete. The fiber still has to be pulled into the conduit and spliced. So far AEG has completed underground work in 8 areas. A lot of the incumbents (existing service providers) use direct buried cable and dig a trench to lay the fiber in. Then they just cover up the trench with dirt, throw out seed and straw, and then move on. If they need to add more fiber later, they have to re-trench and lay new fiber.
That’s about all I can remember from today’s presentation. Once I get to work tomorrow, I’ll check and see if I left anything important out or if I got any information wrong. If so, I’ll make corrections.
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