Steve Campbell sent this note to the Lyme listserv…

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Friends, 

The LymeFiber project is moving right along, even if you don’t see our trucks on your road yet (but see below). Here is your August 2019 update. 

The big news is that all the “make-ready” agreements have been signed with the utilities who have wires on the town’s utility poles. Make-ready is the process of moving existing wires on the poles so there’s space for our fiber cables. Having all these agreements in place is a major milestone for any project like ours. You may see utility employees checking out the poles to see what they need to do. 

ValleyNet, the non-profit that built and operates ECFiber in Vermont and will build and operate LymeFiber, has issued a contract for the job of designing our network. This means figuring out exactly how the fiber cables will be strung through the town, where the hubs are, and where the branch points are. The final design is expected next month. 

So far we have more than 250 people who have completed our no-obligation signup form. That represents a substantial proportion of the premises in town and provides important data for the network design. If you haven’t signed up yet, you can still visit www.LymeFiber.net and add your home or business to the growing list. 

Finally, we are about to start the next important stage of the project: visiting each premise in town, whether they’ve signed up for service or not, to see how we would get the fiber cable from the utility pole on the road to the house or business (in the trade these are called “drops”). Is it a simple one-hop run from the pole to the building? Are there intermediate poles between the road and the building? Is there buried conduit? And so forth. Knowing all this means that if and when an installer comes by to connect the service, they’ll know exactly what they’ll be dealing with. The people doing this survey will have LymeFiber identification. Getting this information does not require going into the buildings, but it might mean walking around the yard. To make sure this is OK with the property owners, in the next few days we will be sending postcards to everyone in town announcing the survey and giving them the chance to opt-out if they don’t want the surveyors on their property. Look for those postcards soon. 

Thanks for supporting LymeFiber. As always, if you have questions or ideas to share, contact us at info@LymeFiber.net. 

Steve Campbell For LymeFiber

It’s been a while since you saw those “LymeFiber” trucks on the roads in town, and you may be wondering what’s happening with the project. Here’s an update.

Those trucks were doing a pole census – noting the precise location and condition of each of the 2,000 utility poles in Lyme where LymeFiber will need to string the fiber-optic cable. With that census complete they now enter the next phase of the project – a phase that can be the most time-consuming and expensive part of the whole project. And at this point it’s all behind the scenes.

It’s called the make-ready phase. Following rules established by the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission, LymeFiber LLC negotiates with each utility who owns those poles to make any changes needed so that LymeFiber can add their cable to the poles. In many cases nothing needs to be done, but often the wires need to be relocated on the poles. If the poles are old or damaged, a whole new pole might be needed. 

The timing and cost of this work – yes, LymeFiber pays – has to be negotiated. That’s what they’re working on now. They have agreements in place from Eversource and New Hampshire Electric Coop; they expect to have an agreement soon from Liberty Utilities. However, negotiations with Consolidated Communications, Inc., (CCI) are proving more complex. CCI rightly sees LymeFiber as competition. The good news is that the team at ValleyNet, the construction and operations manager for LymeFiber, has lots of experience dealing with these problems. They are confident that they will eventually get an agreement from CCI. 

Once they have Pole Attachment Agreements from all the utilities, the actual make-ready work on the poles can begin. When that happens, you will again see utility crews working on the poles. The goal is to have all the make-ready work done by the end of this year. Then the comparatively straightforward task of stringing the fiber-optic cables can begin. The timing will depend on the weather; work usually has to stop during mud season. Although we had originally hoped to provide service in Spring 2020, our goal is to start connecting customers in Summer 2020.

We’re grateful to all the people who have supported the project through the no-obligation sign-up. If you haven’t signed up yet, you can still do so at our website at LymeFiber.net. 

ValleyNet, Lyme Fiber’s implementation partner, announced today that it has chosen a new Managing Director, Christopher Recchia, of Randolph, VT. Chris brings a wealth of non-profit and telecom regulatory experience, most notably as the head of Vermont’s Department of Public Service from 2012-2017. “ValleyNet and ECFiber have created a now-proven model for expanding quality high-speed broadband to rural New England and I look forward to expanding its availability to other areas, as well as bringing ECFiber’s network to its full potential,” Chris stated. Read more »

As of January 2019, the number of signups crossed 200! We’re expecting that between 300 and 400 people will ultimately sign up by the time we begin to provide service in Summer 2020.

There’s no obligation, but if you would like to indicate your interest in a high-speed fiber connection, please fill out the form at the Sign Up Now page.

We’ve just started the web site for LymeFiber.net. Please send any questions or comments to the webmaster at info@lymefiber.net