Salisbury's FTTH Blog

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.