Work will begin next week on a structure that will house fiber-optic cables, meant to provide faster Internet service to some Washington County schools, businesses and residents.
The Point of Presence (PoP) building will be constructed on county-owned property on Colegate Drive in Marietta. The building is being constructed as part of a federally funded fiber optic broadband network project being completed by Chillicothe-based Horizon Telecom.
?This will be a building that will house the electronic equipment that will service the broadband needs for the Washington County area,? said Randy Davies, communications manager with Horizon Telecom.
The overall project will provide high-capacity broadband services with speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second over a 1,960 mile network to approximately 600 regional community anchor institutions in 34 counties, including Washington, Morgan and Noble. Davies said there will eventually be PoP buildings in all the counties.
?The people (in Washington County) that will benefit from it are Marietta Memorial Hospital, the school districts and also the county offices will be able to use it and any businesses that sign up for service,? said Washington County Information Technology Director Eric Skomra. ?It enables them to get a lower cost fiber connection to handle all their Internet services and their phone services.?
A total of 212 health care facilities, 25 community colleges, 15 universities, 231 schools, 34 county public safety answering points, 32 MARCS (Multi-Agency Radio Communications System) towers and 34 industrial parks will benefit from the overall project.
More than 80 percent of those facilities do not currently have fiber-based broadband access or Internet speeds they need.
Local Internet service providers can sign on as project partners to offer service to county residents.
Skomra said the project is vital to the efforts being made to provide wireless high-speed Internet service to county residents who don?t currently have it. The county commissioners hope to use MARCS towers in that project.
?Horizon will be supplying fiber services to some of the primary towers and that backhaul service is critical,? Skomra said. ?Without this fiber in place, to date, it hasn?t been realistic to even consider doing the broadband project.?
Skomra noted that the county has not made any financial commitments for the project.
?We?ve given them a perpetual easement and that perpetual easement means forever and ever, that building can sit in that location on that property whether we sell it or not,? he said. ?Horizon has the ability to get wires to and from that building through the easements. To date, ATT was the only provider in the area and now Horizon is coming into the area and they need a place for their fibers to terminate.?
A $66.4 million Broadband Technologies Opportunity Program stimulus grant, awarded by the National Telecommunications Infrastructure Administration, is funding 70 percent of the overall $94.9 million project, with Horizon providing the remaining 30 percent.
Article source: http://www.mariettatimes.com/page/content.detail/id/542708/Internet-service-site-is-being-readied.html?nav=5002
Source: http://www.fiberopticsensors.co.uk/internet-service-site-is-being-readied
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