Whitehall a Gigabit Community

Whitehall now qualifies to be called a "gigabit" community as we can now deliver a gigabit (1000 mbit) of Internet to selected homes or businesses within the community.

Last week Dave Torgerson became the first customer to be connected to the new fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) system installed by TeleSystem Services (TSS). According to Lee Good of TSS, Dave has been very supportive of the project and got the honor of being the first customer connected. TSS demonstrated over an 800-mbit download and upload from the fiber at his property.

Torgerson said he has been a customer of TSS for years, and so far the new connection has been wonderful. He said even with an older computer, it does the job very well. He added the new speeds will be a benefit to businesses in Whitehall.

The fiber installation was approved by the Whitehall Town Council as an experiment in late 2015 and was then installed by local contractors and TSS staff. The system was uniquely designed by TSS as "plug and play" with no fiber splicing required. There have been several visits by the manufacturer that helped us achieve the concept as well as other telecommunication companies looking to use the same plug and play method and to learn by our experiences and mistakes.

Good said the fiber Internet system has the advantage in that it is essentially "future proof". The fiber itself has virtually unlimited bandwidth capability. By simply changing the Interface equipment at both ends of the fiber we could deliver 10gbit or 100 gbit data speeds over the same fiber. It is presently configured to deliver up to a gigabit (1000-mbit).

Fiber is considered the most reliable of the Internet delivery services and is not affected by weather, temperature, or interference. Its major foe is backhoes. The new fiber system extends from D-street to Whitehall Avenue along 1st Street. It can reach homes or businesses on either side of 1st Street and in some cases can reach homes on the South side of 2nd street or businesses along Legion Avenue.

A ½-inch tube containing the fiber cable is buried to each participating home or business from a vault in the middle of each block. A small enclosure mounted on the side of each client's home or business contains the fiber receiving electronics. Initially, there is capacity for six homes on each block. A single individual fiber runs from each customer all the way back to the Internet source at the Old Cheese Factory (OCF) building. If the tube gets cut it can be simply spliced together and a new fiber cable installed.

"The purpose of the original experimental project was to determine the actual costs to implement the system and to determine if we could actually accomplish the project with local contractors and equipment. We would like to expand it to other areas of Whitehall in the near future. We should be able to do other areas in a much shorter period of time now that we have developed a 'standard' method to accomplish each step," Good said.

TSS has completed the OCF end and is now ready to hook up other homes along the fiber path in the next few weeks. They are also working on methods to extend the faster service out to rural areas.