Construction/Completion of Mainline

To keep our community safe and our surrounding areas beautiful, our entire fiber network must be laid underground. Obviously, we cannot dig a trench and bury the entire length of the miles and miles of cables that make up our network, so we must use a more complicated and efficient process called boring! Thanks to specialized machinery and our outstanding construction team, we are able to dig a relatively small hole in the ground and bore a small, tube-like tunnel that travels horizontally under the ground, allowing us to go under structures like driveways and sidewalks, while also keeping the landscaping above intact. This is one of the reasons it is so important to mark your private utilities as requested during our construction phase!

Once the hole has been dug horizontally, the bore is removed, and the conduit (orange tubing pictured above) takes its place. This conduit gives the fiber optic cables a safe and conducive space to transmit the light information necessary to bring a strong, uninterrupted Wi-Fi signal to your home or business.

After the ground and the conduit are prepped and ready to go, it’s time to roll-out the fiber! We have to fish the line long distances underground, through the conduit to the other side and connect it to a central hub that houses the cables that are then split to each house in your neighborhood. Fiber Optic cables are brought to the beginning of the small tunnel and a bag is attached to it and placed in the tunnel. The cable is then pushed through the conduit using compressed air and is shot out on the other side!

After the cable has made it through, it is then housed in a special container where it is ready to be spliced and brought to your premise!

Splicing means fusing two fiber optic cables together to form one continuous line that can transmit an uninterrupted signal. We do this so we can branch our mainline internet to as many locations as possible and still provide the fastest internet available. Our talented splicers come through and find each central hub of fiber and begin splicing. Each line has about 12 micro-tubes that are made of glass to reflect the data being transferred through light to your home or business! These glass tubes need to be spliced to the correct, corresponding tube to ensure the cable is properly functioning.

With steady hands and a lot of patience, two cables become one and bring the power of fiber optics just outside your door where it waits to be connected to your Optical Network Terminal (ONT).

Once the splicing is complete, the construction portion of our fiber optic installation is over! When we no longer need to have access to the conduits underground, we will be sure to do our best to make your yard or surrounding area look just like it did before we arrived. All holes will be properly filled, and new grass seed will be placed in the affected area. With proper care and attention, the grass should grow back in between one to two months. At this point, you are free to remove all flags and markings for utilities and are just a short bit away from upgrading to a fiber-optic connection!