30 July 2010, Hudson's Hope:

The Peace Region Internet Sociaty has started laying its Fibre Optic Network in Hudson's Hope.  The project is the first FTTH  (Fibre to the Home) project in Northern British Columbia. A portion of the funding for this Pilot Project was provided by the Province of British Columbia's Connecting Citizens Grant Program, while the remaining 3/4 of the funding is a re-investment of surplus funds from your PRiS membership fees. Considerable volunteer labour is also being used to make this very unique project a reality.

Our members continue to want ever-increasing speeds and higher traffic allowances on their Internet connectivity. It has been a decade since PRiS went from only Dial-up to Wireless and ADSL connectivity.  This offered a 20 fold increase in capacity.

Now Fibre optic technology promises to deliver a 100 fold increase in capacity over and above that.  Famous quotable last words here would be: 'That should be enough to last forever!" 

So What's So Great About Fibre 

But in reality, this is quite true this time:  Extra strands of Fibre are being buried in this conduit, and if we ever started running out of capacity, one could simply start running different colours of light down the same fibre. While men recognize only 'red, yellow, blue, and sometimes green', the females of our species know that there are an infinite number of colours, going all the way from Chartreuse to Tangerine, and each such colour would be capable of carrying just as much information as the original white colour. Five colours simultaneously down the same strand of fibre equals five times the capacity. Last year's technology allows 185 light colours at the same time, and the number is going up! 

 For more information about how fibre optics work, or their capacity, go to Wikipedia

Hence the capacity of the fibre we are now burying in the ground is truly unlimited.  It is, dare I say it, 'Future-Proof': When you connect your residence to a fibre-optic network, you are upgrading the value of the residence for your children, your children's children, or anybody who might own your house in the future

What's FTTH worth if I'm not a heavy Internet user? 

The FTTH Council reports that the deployment of FTTH has positive effects on Real Estate values. First, when a community as a whole get FTTH enabled, the community can see a spurt of economic development, as it becomes more attractive to businesses or telecommuters. Secondly, a statistical survey indicated that, other factors being equal, an FTTH home had a $2000 to $5000 price lead on the marketplace. Considering that PRiS is charging far less than that to connect each house on its first pass, one could consider connecting the house simply as an investment, even if you do not anticipate needing uber-connectivity at this time.  As with rural gassification, connecting the home at a future time will be far more costly.

What services will the Fibre-Optic line deliver to my home?

Clearly, PRiS' first objective is to provide a better quality of Internet. Once the system is lit up, the members connected will have a roaring fast consistent connection amongst themselves. However, we expect the demands on bandwidth for the backhaul out of town will increase significantly.  For this reason, the full capacity will not be readily apparent until early Autumn when we bring our link to Ft St John to full capacity, and are provided the extra bandwidth to the world that we have ordered.

Other services are likely to follow in due course: Typically, over time, FTTH connectivity can deliver:

• Voice Telephone
• Video
• Security Monitoring
• Data Backup  

 No schedule has been established yet for these.

When Will it Reach My House?

We will shortly be publishing connectivity maps linked from here as an image, and here as a Google Earth Overlay.  We will try to keep them up to date. It will take time to connect most of the community, so if you are not in the Phase 1 build, please be patient.  It is new to us and manpower is limited. If you are a current wireless subscriber, you will see your service improve a bit also, as the backbone is upgraded, and as some traffic get offloaded from the wireless network onto the Fibre Network.

How much will it cost?

Right up front, if you want fibre brought to your home, PRiS is charging a one-time fee of $150:  Call this 'Future-Proofing' your home.  (If you decide to postpone joining the network to a future date, the cost will most likely be over $1250, since we would have to come back, at additional expense.)

If you wish to subscribe to the Internet service right away, we will have to install some extra electronic guts at your house to activate the connection, at an additional one time cost of $100, bringing the total to $250 plus applicable taxes.

Finally we will need a committment for one year of service at $55 per month plus applicable taxes (slightly less if paid on an annual basis up front).  Included in this is an allowance of 30 gigabytes per month. (That's more movies than you have time to watch!).

Details of the actual agreement, with all the fine print, are posted here.

You are passing through my area. I need specific Information.

Can you spot the PRiS guys in your neighbourhood? They look a lot like these folks. Ask them.

What is all this orange stuff? Fibre, my friend, fibre.

Dig before you bury.

This is how to slot the pavement.

Ready to Lay Fibre