Fiber is Coming!

At long last, we have actual progress on bringing Metro-E fiber to Perimeter!  Monday, the trenching work started.  Tuesday we signed the AT&T contract.  The 60-day clock has started.

Trenching is not fast work.  The conduit will be three feet below the surface as we know we have some future parking lot work in some of the same area.

There will be TWO 3" conduits most of the way.  (THREE later, for other reasons).  One will be for the fiber, the other is for future expansion.  We're trying to convince AT&T to pull copper in, even though we have no present need for it.  Can't really be upset at them if they say 'no.'

There will be two intermediate "Quartize" pull boxes.  These things aren't really big enough to climb into and do anything, but they're sure heavy!

 
One end of the run terminates at a Utility Pole, about 1000' from our building.   

The view from a couple of hundred feet out.  Arrow shows the utility pole.

The view looking back.  The dirt "line" is the part that's already complete.

Note the route of the conduit coming in from the left.  The red flag in the foreground, and continuing way ahead, is the location of the *high power* line coming into the building.  Our conduit  crosses UNDER it.  Want to help with that digging? :-)

The two conduits are three feet down.  Then there's a foot of dirt, and at only 2 feet down the marker/warning tape.  I love that idea.  Sure wish I'd been the one to think of it!

Did I mention our current solution?
Today, ALL of our external connectivity is via a 100-pair cable that comes in from the other street on our corner.  If something happens to that cable, we lose our telephones, our primary data circuit, and our backup circuit.  But, of course, what are the chances of that cable being cut?

Here's what's happening on that other street.  The new fiber connection will be on a utility pole further left of this picture.

Here's a longer shot of that work.  Gee, what's that box in the foreground?  Side story: we were actually walking the property with one of the AT&T guys while the road workers were putting out the flags.  The AT&T guy was standing there (a few feet from the box) wearing his AT&T shirt.  The construction guy looked at him and asked (seriously!): "Oh, do you guys have anything out here?"

Wait, what's that blue flag on the other side of the box?  As in the box is between the road and the new expected edge of the road.  Hmmm...that wouldn't be nice to have in the middle of the road.

A slightly closer view.  (Flag in the background)  Looks like maybe a backhoe has already 'gently touched' this box!

The view from the other side.  Gee, I sure feel confident about our services.

Come on fiber.  Hurry!

Comments

[Tim Larson]

We've just received the green light from AT&T on getting MetroE, although it looks like you guys have a lot more work on your hands to get it put in place. All we need is for some inner duct to be pulled through existing conduit about 250 feet.

It looks like it'll be a race to see who gets MetroE first...

[Marvin - McLean Bible Church]

Contractors were at our site today pulling in our new Metro Ethernet connection. We are gettinga 20Mbps pipe for our primary connection with hopes of upgrading to 50Mbps next year. They had to dig up a little bit of our road to intercept the conduit but we already had two pipes of conduit installed when our building was constructed. We are excited!!

[allen madding]

suggestion: Get someone with a GPS to walk the trench path and record coordinates and make yourself a nice map for future reference.

[Clif Guy]

I know about telco cables being cut. It's happened twice in the 4+ years I've been at Resurrection. Both times it was a 900-pair cable that feeds the entire neighborhood. Both times it was by a road grader along 135th street (the major E-W street that runs 2 blocks from the church) as the street was being widened. We don't have fiber or diverse paths so we were simply down. For the time being, we don't have any practical alternatives. So if they cut it tomorrow, we'll be down again.

[Ryan Clevenger]

We call those fiber seeking backhoes. :) We have Metro-E and have been very satisfied.

[Brad]

Have you ever considered high-speed fixed wireless as an alternative, or for redundancy. You can get anywhere from 1.5 to 1000mgs depending on your location.

www.oneringnetworks.com
404.303.9900, ext. 1511

[Justin]

Looks good.

If you're having parking lot work done over the top you may want to make double sure your construction contractor knows exaclty where that conduit is, and then hope they don't crush it. :) ask me how I know... We had three of our four 4" coundits crushed at the point where a driveway crossed over them. Didn't find out until we tried to pull something else through and no go. We're lucky it didn't cut our fiber in the 4th conduit, pretty crazy.

[Tony Dye]

Hey Justin, sorry you had the bad experience, but thanks for sharing. We're marking the line quite carefully, and we have the, um, "advantage" of running right next to a high-power conduit that's only 2 feet deep, so we know which will be in trouble first. Since we're doing this work just before our construction work, we're coordinating between the two organizations. We think we have it all clearly worked out. Time will tell :-)