Salisbury's FTTH Blog

I wanted to give a quick update this morning on the fiber construction. 

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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

4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.