There’s a sense of urgency within O-NET these days after more than 200 of the Internet service provider’s customers were left unconnected last year despite signing up for services.
There’s a sense of urgency within O-NET these days after more than 200 of the Internet service provider’s customers were left unconnected last year despite signing up for services.
It was the final steps to connect customer homes to the network that posed the greatest problem, with Joe Gustafson, chair of the technology committee at the Olds Institute of Regional and Community Development, calling it a "nightmare."
The term "drops" refers to the infrastructure that connects a property to O-NET’s fibre optic network and the company is determined to finish installing them in the town’s 11 service districts.
"We simply cannot, we cannot go through another year of not getting drops. We are committed to hooking up 800 to 1,000 people this year and so there is no room for nonsense," Gustafson said. "We are in a sense of urgency at O-NET."
O-NET is the service provider of Olds Fibre Ltd., which is owned by the institute.
Gustafson made his remarks during a speech at the institute’s annual general meeting on April 7, held in the atrium of Olds College’s Land Sciences building.
O-NET has cited poor weather and a shortage of skilled labour and equipment as reasons why it could not finish connecting the whole town last year.
The service provider is targeting May 1 as a start date for construction in the final three service districts needing connections. This year, the company has hired three contractors to connect conduit from property lines to homes.
"We’re ramping up to get the job done," Gustafson said. "When the sun shines, we’ve got to make hay just like the farmers, right? Our window of opportunity is less than what we anticipated it to be. So now we’re opening up that window with three contractors. We can get three times more work done when the weather is appropriate."
Another change O-NET is making is using its own staff to pull fibre through the conduit into homes. That was a task contractors were charged with last year but did not have the expertise to do so, Gustafson said. As a result, they could not keep pace with sales and not enough customers were connected during the construction season.
"They were expected to be doing 10 of these per day. They were doing three or four," he said.
O-NET’s fibre optic network extends through pipes leading from the company’s central office behind the Evergreen Centre to the 11 service districts in town.
In each district, the fibre extends through conduit to a Network Access Point (NAP), a vault-like structure, as Gustafson describes.
From the NAP, conduit continues to run to multiple properties.
Finally, to connect a customer, fibre is hooked onto existing fibre within the NAP and pulled through the conduit, into the house.
Of the 11 service districts in Olds, eight are currently connected.
On March 24, town council passed two bylaws that would allow O-NET to borrow $8 million with about $1.9 million of that cash going towards connecting the remaining three areas.
More than $5.3 million would cover operating shortfalls this year and next and the last $680,000 would be reserved for contingency costs.
The three areas still needing the distribution fibre are located west of 57 Avenue and south of Highway 27 and in a pocket west of the railroad tracks, east of the Westview Co-op and north of Highway 27.
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