High-speed internet build-out in Jasper met with obstacles - mainly rock and cable

Smithville Telecom, a subsidiary of Smithville Communications of Ellettsville, has been working on a fiber build-out of the city since 2015. Originally, the company planned to complete the $7 million project by the end of 2018 but had to push the build-out of a few neighborhoods into 2019. Now, the company plans to complete the project by the end of 2019. The biggest hurdle so far: rock.

“We ran into a lot of rock that slowed down our construction schedule,” said John Patten, president of Smithville.

Smithville buries most of its fiber lines, both for security and aesthetics, Patten said. In the first parts of the project, which began on Jasper’s west side near Deer Creek and Red Oak Estates, crews had to dig through layers of rock to bury the lines, which took longer than simply digging through dirt. Those areas are complete, and Melissa Wright, lead project manager for Jasper, said work is picking up pace.

“It’s going fantastic,” she said.

Smithville has completed six of the 26 fiberhoods — a fiberhood is a service area within the City of Jasper — and already services 1500 homes with 300 customers.

Crews are currently working along Division Road in the area Smithville has dubbed the Thunderbird fiberhood. Thunderbird covers the area bordered by Sunshine Drive on the west, Division Road to the south, Andrea Lane to the north and St. Charles Street to the east. They are also working in the Porsche fiberhood along Division Road west of Thunderbird.

Wright figures that once aerial work begins, the project will pick up more speed. In some areas, Smithville will run fiber-optic lines along the city’s utility poles. Right now, crews are hanging lines along Kellerville Road.

Another hurdle is the supply of fiber-optic line. Manufacturers of the line cannot keep up with worldwide demand, Patten said. That means Smithville is sometimes left waiting for the line to arrive. Smithville orders the line as far out as they can to get in the queue. Wright said they’ve already ordered most of the line for 2018.

“We’re already being told that some of that won’t come in on time to get (the project) done in 2018,” Wright said.

Wright remembers a similar supply-and-demand problem a few years ago. She hopes other companies will see the demand for fiber line, which takes months to manufacture, and join the industry.

Once complete, the Smithville project will offer anyone in Jasper access to a high-speed, fiber-optic internet connection. According to Smithville’s website, fiber-optic internet is more reliable and more secure, and offers customers a personal connection rather than the “party-line” system in cable that has several connections on a single source. Fiber service is also much faster than cable internet, capable of downloading a two-hour movie in about a minute, versus the 58-minute national average, according to Smithville’s website.

Wright said she expects to finish the project by the end of 2019, as scheduled, if not a little sooner. Still, she’s leaving the scheduled end date at the end of 2019.

“It’s easier to move people up than it is to keep pushing them back,” she said.

Patten assured that despite the obstacles, Smithville’s commitment to offer Jasper a full fiber build-out at no cost to the city “remains intact.”

“This is a major infrastructure project,” Patten said. “It does tend to run into problems along the way.”