Cody Davis, an equipment operator with Patton Excavation of Dundee, Ore., uses a machine to lift dirt from the ground as groundsman Tyrel Cartwright of Toledo waits. The two spent time on April 22, 2014 working to instal fiber optic lines to be utilized by ToledoTel on Tucker Road just outside of Toledo.
By early next year, Toledo will be the first gigabit community in Washington with Fiber to the Home service to all homes and businesses in the town, providing it with high-speed Internet access.
When ToledoTel completes the project, about 2,300 locations will be serviced with fiber, including vacant homes, Dale Merten, COO of ToledoTel, said.
“We’re not picking winners or losers here; we’re providing gigabit fiber capacity to 100 percent of our service territory,” Merten said.
The replacement of the previous copper network with fiber has been completed for the mainline and service lines for ToledoTel’s $18 million project. At this point the company is testing areas of the fiber network and as it passes at 100 percent, then cutovers for customers are scheduled.
“We’re probably 60 percent complete on the cutovers,” Merten said.
He said the project has been good for real estate agents because people are buying property due to the fiber service. According to the Fiber to the Home Council, a home’s value increases $5,000 when a fiber line is there.
ToledoTel is planning ahead for future development with the project as well.
“We placed enough fiber in the ground to service every tax parcel, regardless of whether there’s a house on it or not,” Merten said.
Merten said the feedback from the community about the high-speed service has been mostly positive, but he added that customers who don’t use the Internet as much aren’t as understanding about why ToledoTel is doing the project.
A few years ago, about 20 percent of ToledoTel customers were calculated to be telecommuters, Merten said.
“Now I see that inching up; there’s a lot more people interested in buying a house because they can telecommute, but they need a really good Internet connection,” Merten said.
Customers will not be paying for the upgrade unless they decide to increase the speed they’re getting.
Merten said fiber has a minimum life of 75 years, and as technology develops to allow for faster Internet speeds, while some electronics may have to be upgraded to accommodate for that, the network won’t have to be changed.
Weather won’t affect the fiber network like the old copper network.
“It’s going to be a lot less maintenance and a lot more reliable in terms of call quality, Internet access,” Merten said.
Digital subscriber lines are also affected by power lines, and if those lines are improperly grounded, it can cause problems.
With the copper network, ToledoTel would experience issues when copper thieves strip wire from telephone poles, causing issues for customers.
The fiber network won’t be affected by that problem.
ToledoTel also has some gigabit fiber in Winlock and Morton, and is looking at expanding into the communities.
However, in those towns, ToledoTel will likely do final connection to homes via wireless because it’s less expensive than running fiber to each home.
