Text and Photo by David Beers

You call home. You join a zoom meeting for work. You text your son. You skype your mom. You google a recipe. You log on to the work computer. You play Call of Duty with your cousin in Missouri. You check Facebook. You post to Instagram. The possibilities to connect instantly to everyone in every way imaginable are endless and amazing. And thank God they are in this time of social distancing and staying at home. How did this technological wonder happen? Should the Norfolk community invest in extending fiber optic trunk lines down every road in town? We need a bit of a backstory.  

In 1844, Samuel Morse, a polymath artist, gathered a talented team of scientists to produce and promote the first long-distance telegraph in the US, making use of an electric pulse moving along a copper wire. This started everything. Before this, communication was limited to more mechanical means: yelling, drums, smoke, lanterns, pigeons, pony express. Soon everyone was tapping out instantaneous electronic pulse messages (Morse Code) on copper wires all over the world. Even though the telegraph is no longer used, we still create the same electric pulse messages when we type on a keyboard and click a mouse. And those electric pulses and resulting carrier signals get translated into other kinds of long-distance communications that have evolved from the telegraph.

In today’s mostly digital world, voice, images and mechanical movements (keyboards, mice, joysticks) get electronically converted into strings of ones and zeros (binary code). That code is then moved around the world in four different ways: electric pulses on copper wires (telephone and cable), light pulses in glass threads (fiber optic), radio waves (broadcast radio, broadcast TV, cell signals), and laser light pulses (bar code scanners, DVD players).

The telegraph wires were gradually replaced by telephone wires starting in the early 1900s. Telephone infrastructure was originally built for analog voice signals and has a hard time carrying a lot of data quickly. The first and slowest way to get the internet is a dial-up analog signal. This method has been almost entirely replaced by better technology, but many of us still feel nostalgia for the unique sounds our first modems made as they connected to the internet. And we also remember not being able to make a phone call while on the internet. 

In the late 1990s, a new telephone internet service known as DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) became available. DSL transmits internet data over phone lines without interfering with voice calls. DSL is also 100 times faster than dial-up, making it possible to do such things as stream video. Unfortunately, you need to be within three miles of a DSL hub to get this service and the further from the hub, the slower the service. Not all of Norfolk has access to DSL. Frontier is Norfolk’s only DSL provider, with plans costing from $20 to $40 per month for download speeds of 6-24 Mbps and a 1-5 Mbps upload speed. Mbps is megabits (one million bits of data) per second.

At the same time as DSL was being developed, cable TV companies started offering internet over their infrastructure. Cable was originally built for video signals and has a much easier time carrying large amounts of data quickly. Xfinity is Norfolk’s only cable provider with residential plans costing from $50 to $100 per month for download speeds of 25-300 Mbps and 2-10 Mbps upload speeds—business plans can cost considerably more. Like DSL, cable is not available everywhere in Norfolk and many of us have heard horror stories of Xfinity asking for thousands of dollars to extend the cable to a home.

In the 1990s, fiber optic cables were being installed all over the world. In the 2000s, telecom companies began to offer direct fiber optic internet access to business and residential customers in major metropolitan areas. Fiber optic trunk lines connect cities, states and countries with thousands of aboveground, underground and underwater cables, each of which has many hair-like glass threads or fibers. Almost all communications pass through these trunk cables at some point in their journey. There are fiber optic cables running throughout the state to connect government offices, emergency services, cell towers and schools. A fiber cable runs from the center of Colebrook through downtown Norfolk and on to North Canaan, with a spur line heading south to the state police radio tower on Winchester Road. Our town hall, fire department, school, two of our cell towers on Route 44 and a few private residences connect to it. It is not cheap to connect even if the cable runs by your house, but you do get 1000 Mbps for both uploads and downloads that never slow down.

In the 2010s, satellite internet services began to be widely offered, including in Norfolk. Radio waves beam the signal from you to the satellite and then back down to a data center. With a small metal dish aimed at a clear sky and a monthly fee of $50 to $150, you can get 5-25 Mbps download speeds and 1-3 Mbps upload speeds. A unique feature of a satellite plan is the monthly data limit. Once you reach that limit, you experience slow speeds of 1-3 Mbps for downloads for the remainder of the month. Satellite internet has a delay in signal as a result of the extremely long distances the signals travel, such that interactive internet uses are difficult (meetings, gaming, video conferencing). Also the weather and topography can affect the signal (rain fade and periods of no service). There are two providers in Norfolk: Hughes Net and Viasat. 

With the proliferation of smart phones in the 2010s, there came a sixth and final way to connect, one that most of us use when on the go: cell towers. Your device (phone, tablet, computer, hot spot hub) connects to cell towers with radio waves. Most cell towers then transmit the signal directly to a fiber optic cable at the tower. A few rural towers connect to a copper cable that then makes its way to a fiber optic trunk line. A very few cell towers, in very rural areas, have no land connection and forward the signal on to a tower that does. You can use any of your devices to create a Wi-Fi hot spot. Wi-Fi uses radio waves to provide internet. You can buy a hot spot hub (looks like a hockey puck) that is dedicated to Wi-Fi. Creating a hot spot will use up your cellular data amazingly quickly. Of course you need good cell service, which parts of Norfolk do not have, including much of South Norfolk. We have three cell towers in Norfolk: on Route 44 East, Route 44 West and Loon Meadow Road. Our major cell service providers are AT&T and Verizon, and to a lesser extent Sprint and T-Mobile. 

Finally, before you switch to a different type of internet provider or spend additional money to upgrade your service, please try the following inexpensive ways to improve your internet at home: 

• Internet speeds can vary tremendously over time, especially during high usage periods (evening) when speeds can drop dramatically from the speeds quoted above or your service goes out entirely due to high internet traffic. Go online during low usage periods like early morning or the middle of the night.
• Update your device: Sometimes a phone or computer that is only a few years old cannot handle the ever-increasing amount of data we are using.
• Update your modem and router (better to own these than rent from provider).
• Close all unused apps that are taking up processing power and bandwidth.
• Run a virus scan and cleanup program weekly.
• Put your modem/router in a location that maximizes signal strength; such at the center of a house and away from obstructions, particularly away from metal bed frames and metal appliances.
• Plan ahead to limit the number of users at one time. Keep in mind that one person streaming a high definition video needs as much as 7 Mbps and five will need at least five times that.