HAWLEY BROADBAND UPDATE – FEBRUARY, 2020
By Lark Thwing
Communications Committee Chair and
Chairman, FHMS Four Town Broadband Committee
Posted 2/1/2020
I’m sure it feels like Hawley’s broadband is never ever going to happen. But don’t lose hope. It is happening slowly but surely. Infrastructure is being installed and once that is done people are being connected.
Here’s how the infrastructure process works. We started with a desktop model with the most likely locations for poles. Some of those locations must be confirmed with actual radio signals before the pole is put in place. But here’s the general procedure: install the pole; notify the utility company that we need electricity brought to the pole; install the hardware and antennas on the pole; have utility company come, and in most cases, install an electric utility pole on the same side of the road as our broadband pole, then run electricity to that new electric pole; then we run underground conduit from the new electric pole to our broadband pole. Before any pole can be put in we have to have a pole hearing in the local community. We’ve had the pole hearing for Hawley’s poles but if we need to relocate a pole more than a hundred feet we need a new pole hearing. The electric companies need pole hearings as well. All of these steps take time.
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| . . . and the process applies to all Four Towns |
The priority that the FHMS Four Town Broadband Committee set for our vendor, WiValley, is first and foremost to get the poles in while we have access to the ground, then to get the utilities brought to those poles, then to get the hardware installed on the poles, and then to get a signal link from our main pole location in Savoy on Chapel Hill Loop Road to the individual poles or whatever relay pole is necessary. Just having a pole up does not mean we’re getting a signal to it and therefore does not mean that it can be serving customers. Right now we can serve customers from the main pole in Savoy and we can serve customers from the pole established at Berkshire East which is linked to the main Savoy pole. By the end of January we expect to have poles at the Florida Town Hall and Bliss Hill in Florida linked to the main Savoy pole and able to serve customers. To be clear, we only connect customers when the WiValley crew(s) cannot build infrastructure.
[Next: status of poles.] Continue reading →
