New Equipment Helps TSS Bring Fiber to Area

A strange-looking new machine has come to reside in Whitehall. It's called a Hydro Excavator. It basically consists of a high-pressure water wand for digging holes and trenches and a powerful high-volume vacuum cleaner for sucking up the resulting mess.

TeleSystem Services (TSS) has acquired the new device for expanding our 2017 Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) system. This expansion project was recently funded by a local ARPA grant. This new machine will be used to install handholes, fiber distribution hubs, home connections, and for "potholing."

Potholing is defined as using high-pressure water and vacuum suction to locate underground utilities in a safe and non-destructive manner. In the training session provided by the manufacturer's representative, TSS fiber techs were able to expose an underground utility line buried about thirty inches underground in about 15 minutes with no resulting street mess. Earlier we did one by hand and it took most of the day and was really hard work (or so claims the young man who had to dig it!)

During the demonstration, the 3-inch vacuum hose sucked up the dirt, rocks, and muddy water as we went deeper and deeper and deposited them in a tank on the back of the trailer. When we were finished we had a "clean hole" and no surrounding mess. However, we did accidentally discover it has the vacuum power to suck up a fairly large rock about the size of your fist. And of course, it got stuck in the middle of the 20-ft hose on the way to the tank and was difficult to remove. Live and learn!

The high-pressure rotating nozzle uses water at about 3000 psi to soften the soil and to dig. Starting the hole is messy but the rep showed us a trick to avoid getting sprayed by muddy water. He placed a cutoff traffic cone over the hole to contain the spray until the hole is down a couple of inches. From there on down a nice round hole about 8 inches in diameter was excavated to expose (daylight) the utility line. The high-pressure water prevents accidental damage to the utility line rather than using mechanical tools like a backhoe, shovel, or pick that might puncture, rip up, or break the utility line. After the utility depth is determined our trenching contractor, Nelson Sprinkler, can then safely trench over the top of the line at a lesser depth. TSS will also use the excavator to make future home connections from the buried underground fiber without harming the conduit or the fiber.

The Hydro Excavator is really speeding up the installation work. TSS hopes to have most of the underground conduits placed and the system operational before the ground freezes this Fall. If you see orange pipes sticking up on street corners, that's part of our conduit system. Next, we are starting to install fiber in the conduit and then installing the fiber to individual homes and businesses along the routes. We will start on the East side of town and work our way toward the West.

If you see us on your block call TSS to get a free fiber install now while there is ARPA grant money available to pay for the installation. TSS has to finish the overall ARPA grant requirements on this project before we can go back and connect skipped homes. This might take a year or so and the grant money will not be available.

Fiber optics is considered the best Internet delivery system in the telecommunications industry, now and in the future. Internet speeds for this new expansion project will be to the newly proposed federal standards of at least 100 Mbit down and 20 Mbit up for a residential property. This speed should be fast enough for your entire family to use all of their Internet devices at the same time.

Watch for us working in your neighborhood with this strange-looking machine and give us a call so you don't have to wait years for a fiber installation. Call TSS at 406-287-5308 if you're ready to join the fiber Internet revolution and we will get you done now rather than years from now.