Canby is now on the cutting edge of technology with the installation of fiber optic cable to area homes by Canby Telcom this year.
The company is stepping up plans to upgrade entire neighborhoods within the city limits to its new Fiber-to-the-Home service in 2009. Technicians began installations to a few homes last week.
“Canby is ahead of the game in providing fiber optics to individual homes in the community,” said Keith Galitz, general manager of Canby Telcom. “Only 3 percent of the world population has Fiber-to-the-Home- it’s a very new technology — but people want faster speed on their computers and that requires bandwidth. Fiber allows for enormous amounts of bandwidth.”
Galitz noted th
at with the multi-million dollar investment, Canby Telcom will “future-proof” the homes of Canby residents by increasing the bandwidth capacity for new data and entertainment services as they become available.
“Canby is getting service superior to the service most Portland residents — and residents in a lot of major cities — are getting,” he said.
Providing the innovative technology won’t come cheap for Canby Telcom. Galitz estimated that the fiber-laying project will cost the company about $3.5 million over the next few years.
That includes costs of about $1,800 to $2,000 per residence to hook the fiber cable directly to the home.
Because no other system out there today — wired or wireless — can compete with fiber-optic cable for quality, Galitz deems the hefty up-front investment vital.
“That’s the reinvesting we are doing for the community and for the needs of our customers,” he said. “We consider this upgrade essential if we are going to continue to provide our subscribers with increased Internet speeds, more entertainment programming options and new cutting-edge communications services.”
The project involves running fiber optic cable directly to an optical network terminal, called an ONT box, placed on the side of a customer’s home. The unobtrusive gray box is about 8 inches by 12 inches in size. Since fiber requires an electrical circuit, Canby Telcom will also contract with local electricians to install a power outlet next to the ONT. Galitz said the entire installation comes at no cost to the customer.
One box takes about two hours per house to install, depending on the weather and services the customer carries, said head splicer Kevin Pearson. Technicians will coordinate with the homeowner on installation, he said.
Fiber optic cable is made of small strands of glass and has a virtually limitless capacity to carry telephone, digital television and high-speed Internet. Data travels over fiber in a fashion similar to traditional copper wire, but fiber offers vast amounts of bandwidth for delivery of the state-of-the-art services.
Over the long run, Galitz said fiber will mean less maintenance than copper line. “So we will lower our operating costs, once the project is finished,” he said.
Two significant features of fiber-optic cable —making it the optimum cable connection for the home — are its inherent immunity to electrical noise and the wide available bandwidth, as compared to copper wire. Both of these attributes will be of importance as consumer-related high-speed technology continues to develop.
Fiber-to-the-Home customers have a dedicated fiber connection directly to their house, bypassing the need for outdated mediums such as coaxial cable or copper wire, Galitz said.
He noted that although many cable companies advertise a “fiber optic network,” they may not be offering the point-to-point connection and enormous bandwidth of true Fiber-to-the-Home.
“They say they are providing fiber optics, but they actually use a coaxial cable in a ring around a coverage area, not a fiber connection to each individual home or business,” he said.
Canby Telcom first broke ground on the project last year, doing underground work and laying conduit in preparation for the fiber optics network. Now, technicians are installing fiber in the conduits, all the way to each individual house.
Canby homeowner Jerry Ray said he called Canby Telcom and requested a fiber optic hookup. Within two weeks, it was being done.
“I’m really excited about this,” Ray said about the high-speed connection. “I can’t wait to use it.”
Plans are underway to fully transition customers within the Redwood, Territorial, Tofte and Faist areas in 2009, with the first installations starting in Willow Creek Estates and Vine Meadows next week, Galitz said.
“We will be doing the core Canby community only,” he said. “It is too expensive to provide fiber optics for rural customers at this time.”
Canby Telcom has already placed fiber optic feeder cables throughout most residential neighborhoods within the city limits.
If a resident living in one of those areas adds the Canby Telcom HDTV service or high-speed Internet access, the company will convert the home to a dedicated fiber-optic connection as part of the installation of new services. The company is also continuing to bore fiber cable to additional neighborhoods in 2009 and expects to convert entire neighborhoods in 2010.
“Our intent is to have close to 1,800 homes in fiber by the end of this year, with more the following year” Galitz said.
Canby Telcom has about 8,000 customers, he said.