What about fiber?

By Dave Beers

The first fiber optics were developed in the early 1900s for doctors to see inside the body, which led to the invention of the gastroscope in 1956. Fiber-optic communications were developed in the 1960s, which NASA used for the television cameras sent to the moon. In 1970, Corning Glass figured out how to do low-cost manufacturing of glass pure enough to transmit high-speed data. This led to fiber-optic cables being installed worldwide 25 years ago. This is the backbone of our current communication infrastructure. Almost all Internet use and most phone calls now travel along this fiber backbone. While this backbone is super fast, with an enormous capacity to carry data, the last mile to our homes and business is, for the most part, not fast at all.

In a fiber optic cable, the hairlike bendable glass fibers are individually coated with plastic, bundled and then wrapped in a protective tube that is run on telephone poles and underground—just like electric, telephone and cable copper wires. The pulses of light move vast amounts of data 40,000 times faster than copper cables, with the limit on fiber speed being the transceivers at intersections of the fiber network. Unlike copper, glass fiber is immune to electromagnetic interference and can carry signals much farther distances without a signal repeater. Having fewer signal repeaters means less long-term maintenance cost.

Here in Norfolk, the best speed you can get for cable is 300 Mbps (megabits per second) for downloads and 10 Mbps for uploads. These numbers are optimistic because if 100 people on the same cable line are all streaming videos at the same time, the 300 Mbps speed gets cut to 3 Mbps. Fiber, on the other hand, brings you a consistent 1,000 Mbps (a gigabit per second) or more for downloads and uploads. These speeds will only increase in the future as transceiver technology improves. The key here is the far superior fiber upload speed that many of us now want for video meetings, remote computing, cloud computing and file uploading.

In much of the world fiber optics are considered the newest essential public utility. Many other countries have been more aggressive in their pursuit of getting fiber-optic Internet to their citizens. As of 2019, South Korea had 82 percent of its homes wired with fiber, followed by Japan at 78 percent, with the United States ranked 28th at 15 percent. In the United States, 70 percent of residential fiber service is provided by commercial providers in large cities. The few rural locations that have provided fiber to each home have had it done either by working with a local public utility or through local government. Commercial providers currently do not think providing more fiber cable service is a profitable undertaking.

Norfolk resident Kim Maxwell is president of the board of directors of Northwest ConneCT, a regional nonprofit formed to bring fast fiber-optic Internet to a 25-town region that extends from Salisbury to Hartland to Burlington to New Fairfield. Northwest ConneCT is leading the effort to make Norfolk the first town in our region, and in the entire state, to have fiber-optic Internet service available to every home in town. Norfolk also has its own broadband committee, whose members are Bill Brown, Libby Borden and Julie Scharnberg.

With about 70 miles of roads, having 2,100 poles, leading to about 750 homes, building a fiber-optic network in Norfolk is no small task. Fiber optic would be particularly beneficial to the roughly 300 homes in town without access to cable Internet. The fiber-optic trunk cables would be installed on all of the town’s telephone poles and would then connect to the existing fiber-optic cable network that runs through Norfolk. These trunk cables would be owned by the town, and the drop wires to each home would be owned by a private partner.

The exact cost of this endeavor is still being hammered out. Here are some preliminary numbers. It costs about $50,000 per mile to string fiber cable on the poles. With 70 miles of roads, that is a cost of $3.5 million. An air-conditioned utility building at the transfer station to house the distribution switches will cost about $200,000. If the town borrows an even $3.5 million at an interest rate of 2 percent, that will translate to a 2 percent increase in the mill rate (0.5 mills) to pay $127,000 yearly for the term of a 40-year loan.

Other financing options are being pursued, including state funds and private investment. Once the network is completed, the town will own the trunk lines and associated infrastructure, just like they own the town roads. A private fiber-optic service company will connect the homes to the trunk lines (the drop wires) and provide maintenance and support services. Whether a home connects is entirely up to each homeowner.

The tentative plan is to contract with a fiber-optic service company that is currently servicing nearby towns in western Massachusetts. This company would charge an initial installation fee along with a monthly service fee. The installation fee would be between $100 and $200 for a typical home, and more for homes that are far away from the road. The estimated monthly service fee would be $60-$100 per month, with perhaps some subsidies available for low-income households. Each home would have 1 Gbps Internet access, and there would be a local call center for service issues. Additional services, including phone and streaming services like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu and ESPN, would be a separate charge by other providers. These streaming services will be needed to get the TV channels many are used to.

Both Northwest ConneCT and  the town’s broadband committee see making Norfolk the first all-fiber town as a way to bring both economic development and young families to town. The hope is that, if properly marketed and promoted, the availability of fiber-optic service would give Norfolk a preferential position in attracting the pandemic emigrants leaving the cities. Our society’s hunger for ever-increasing amounts of computer power and Internet usage is outgrowing what copper wires, cell towers and satellites can currently provide. The new technologies of 3D virtual reality and telemedicine will exponentially increase what we expect out of our Internet connections. But the question remains, are we willing to pay for it?