Overview of the Construction Process from Permitting to "Ready for Customers"
Overview
Surf Internet typically installs our fiber in an easement that each city, county or state has established for utilities to install their services.
1. Permitting
Each new fiber construction plan needs approved by the state or local agency that regulates construction within their jurisdiction. This can include, state highway, county easements, city, railroad and various others. Permits, based on their complexity and how many existing utilities are already present can take anywhere from a few days to be approved to months.
2. Underground
The underground stage is the process of pulling conduit in the ground once the permits and final fiber paths have been established. The two main ways of accomplishing this is with a plow or a directional boring machine. Along with conduit, fiber hand holes are also installed in the underground phase that allow technicians access to the backbone for circuit installations.
3. Fiber Pull
After all of the underground work, the fiber pulling team installs the backbone fiber within the conduit leaving access for the splicing crew to pull enough slack to service the fiber in the future. This process can either be a manual “pull” using a string attached to the cable or advanced using a blowing machine that can send the cable through a feeding system.
4. Splicing
Splicing fiber takes a well trained technician to break open the cable and attach other fiber to the backbone. There are various ways our technicians accomplish this using fusion splicing primarily. Splice cases are installed for customer access and to either bypass or light sections for various types of access.
5. Backbone Complete
Once all stages of the physical construction have been completed, our network engineers can install various types of electronics to service customers and send data over the newly installed fiber. Complete only refers to the stage of getting the backbone fiber ready for customer access and does not mean the fiber is Lit yet. It does mean the fiber construction crew is on to the next project that has passed the permitting stage and is ready to start the underground process in a new location.
6. Ready for Customers
After the newly installed backbone has been completed, our fiber installation technicians are ready to install a fiber connection into your home and bring the fastest Internet to your home or business.