Smithville Digital begins project to install direct fiber-optic connections in more than 30,000 homes: Faster with fiber optics

Apr 12, 2009 (Herald-Times - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- UVAL | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Fiber-optic technology can transmit information in the blink of an eye. With a large fiber build-out project happening near Bloomington, big changes to lifestyles and livelihoods may be coming just as quickly.

Smithville Digital, formed as a spin-off of Ellettsville's Smithville Telephone Co., is in the midst of a massive expansion of its infrastructure. The company aims to install direct fiber-optic connections in the homes of all of its more than 30,000 residential customers. At the moment, crews are working near Ellettsville in the vicinity of Union Valley Road.

As part of what Smithville calls its Fiber-To-The-Home overbuild, customers can opt to receive Internet service as fast as 100 megabits per second. The high speed, director of operations Bart Bretsch said, comes about because there won't be any copper wire in the network, just a direct fiber connection from each home. That's fast enough to download an entire feature-length film in an a minute or less.

The technology is "an economic development tool badly needed in rural areas," said Cullen McCarty, executive vice president of Smithville.

Smithville serves portions of Monroe County as well as Howard, Tipton, Boone, Hendricks, Morgan, Brown, Owen, Clay, Greene, Sullivan, Daviess, Martin, Lawrence, Orange, Gibson and Posey counties.

Experts can already envision the things possible through access to ultra-high speed data connections.

Larry Gigerich is managing director of Indianapolis firm Ginovus. His company helps other companies find the best new sites on which to locate a new office, factory or other branch.

"The most important asset for any business with site selection decisions really comes down to human capital," he said.

The kind of connectivity offered by Smithville, he said, provides new opportunities. "If you have that technology accessible to you, you could tap into that work force from anywhere."

Where before companies might have favored big cities because they offered a larger pool of talent to draw from, high-speed connections allow companies to "tap into people who fit the profile for what you need who are in a rural community," he said.

Gigerich cites airline Jet Blue's work-at-home program for customer service reps and booking agents as jobs that can be done from anywhere in the country via a high speed connection.

Software giant Oracle, he said, also taps software developers from all over the country and many work from homes many, many miles from the office.

The build-out may also help attract some businesses. "Clearly, having technology in place for those companies who want to have a facility somewhere, it does put a rural community in a better place," Gigerich said.

Other factors companies consider, he said, are cost of land or buildings, local taxes, quality of life, cost of living and confidence in being able to collaborate with government officials.

"This will certainly stand out as the place that would have the greatest level of connectivity in rural Indiana by far," he said.

The build-out isn't all business. Geoff Schomacker of the state Office of Community and Rural Affairs said, "there's a quality of life there."

People in those areas could benefit from increased access to health information, educational materials, entertainment and a means to buy and sell goods all over the globe.

Smithville won't be the first independent telecom company in the state to engage in a fiber-to-the-home project. Rochester Telephone, serving most of Fulton County in north-central Indiana, embarked on its fiber build-out in 2003.

"The demand has been very strong. We continue to get demand without even advertising very much," said company president Alan Terrell. So far, they've wired about 3,000 customers.

Some of the biggest uses of bandwidth on the network have been downloading music or videos and playing video games, according to Terrell.

The rural area served by Rochester Telephone is just as hungry for high tech gear as the big city. "The demand in rural areas, I believe, is equal to metropolitan areas," he said.

While some may perceive that rural residents may not want high speed connectivity, the company head thinks differently.

"Many people who work in urban and city areas work at desks where they have Internet access all day," Terrell said. "In our case, many people don't have access all day long, so when they do get home at night, they're online."

In a 2008 survey conducted by the Pew Charitable Trusts, it was reported that 38 percent of people living in rural America now have broadband at home, compared with 31 percent in 2007.

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