Tuesday morning a small RST Fiber crew dug a hole next to the Wait Avenue pavement – and set Wake Forest on a path to being the first high-speed fiber optic internet network small town in North Carolina.
There was a hastily-called press conference/photo opportunity that brought out Mayor Vivian Jones, Commissioner Zachary Donahue, Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell, Public Information Officer Bill Crabtree, some of the local press and camera crews from at least two Raleigh television stations.
Dan Holt, who has been one of the movers and shakers behind the campaign to bring high-speed fiber to the town and is a member of the town’s task force for high-speed fiber, said, “Everything is moving rapidly.”
So rapidly that the town officials and representatives from RST Fiber were not due to meet until the following day when O’Donnell said they would discuss “pole attachment agreements, a lease of a ten-foot by ten-foot space in the old laundromat beside town hall to put their equipment and permitting.”
It was just last week when RST Fiber announced it was interested in coming to Wake Forest and met with town officials.
And Holt says it will be only weeks or months before RST begins to lay fiber for a town network.
Tuesday’s dig is just a small step. “The purpose of this is to install conduit from downtown Wake Forest to a carrier hotel (a fancy way of saying co-lo ‘colocation) facility in Raleigh. Once that gets in the ground, they will blow the fiber through the conduit. This fiber will act as a backbone between Wake Forest and Raleigh,” Holt said in an email.
The crew will also connect Holt’s home to the network because he – and a number of other volunteers – will be the beta testers for the network.
After Tuesday morning dig, a casual groundbreaking of sorts, Mayor Vivian Jones said, “The RST project is such an exciting opportunity for all of us. There are so many residential uses and then the business opportunities are without number. We can certainly envision small technology-dependent companies from several sectors being drawn to locate here. The possibilities are overwhelming!”
In town, RST plans to use two models. There will be fiber cables running to homes and businesses and wireless transmitters to span the last space between the network and the customers.
RST has been mapping distances in town and will use its maps to locate the high demand areas. Those high demand areas – which could include downtown and the area between South Main and the CSX rail line where companies such as defense contractor 3 Phoenix and services such as the North Carolina Wireless Research Center are located – will probably get service first.
Interest in the high-speed service is high. The town reported Monday that, less than a week after the interest survey, http://www.wakeforestnc.gov/fiber-to-the-home-survey/aspx, was put on the website, more than 1,100 people had responded. The hope had been to have 3,500 responders by the end of May. The responses will be used to show the areas of town where there is high individual demand.
Holt, who works for 3 Phoenix, has a survey on his website, http://www.wakeforestfiber.com.
What RST Fiber based in Shelby is promising is internet connections up to and at 1,000mbps, which is 20 times faster than the download speed in Time Warner’s best package and 200 times faster than it upload speed.
Dan Limerick, RST’s CEO and founder, says the cost will be $99 for residential customers, but also says tiered pricing will be available for customers who want to pay less and can use slower speeds.
The company announced in March that it would be providing fiber networks in Asheville, Charlotte and Raleigh.
Through either construction or lease, RST has built a fiber optic network that spans the state and is over 3,100 miles long.
