By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
LIMESTONE — By the end of 2012, 256 miles of high-speed Internet line will be in place through Aroostook County as part of the Three Ring Binder project and a total of 1,100 miles of fiber optic cable will be implemented statewide, bringing high speed broadband Internet to over 100 rural communities in Maine previously relegated to dial-up service.
With over 90 miles of high capacity fiber optic cable to be laid in Aroostook County by the end of the year construction of the Three Ring Binder project was celebrated during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on July 18 at the Loring Commerce Centre by an enthusiastic crowd of 30, including Congressman Mike Michaud, Maine Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner George Gervais, state legislators and Maine Fiber Company officials and representatives of Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.
“This project is statewide, but Aroostook County is one of the places we’re the most excited about because we think that [the region] has some of the most to gain by this new infrastructure,” explained President of Tilson Fiber Technology Joshua Broder before the Monday celebration. Tilson Fiber Technology is managing the building of the 1,100-mile network on behalf of Maine Fiber Company, LLC. was subcontracted to manage the building of the Internet network on behalf of the Maine Fiber Company.
Carl Flora, president and CEO of the Loring Development Authority, agrees with Broder that the project will be an economic boon to The County.
“Aroostook County can do many things extremely well, but our geographic location and distance from markets has long been a challenge for us, but access to abundant bandwidth at a reasonable cost will help us negate this distance challenge and restores Aroostook County to its natural advantage, which is supportive communities, diligent, hard working, educated workers with a strong work ethic who can turn out superior products and services at competitive costs,” Flora said during the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “The investment in this new infrastructure coupled with advantages we already enjoy are the ingredients to growth and development of our economy in the future.”
Tim McAfee Flora also mentioned that he’s already received word from an international company that became intrigued by the commerce centre after they learned of the newly available bandwidth — and there is plenty of bandwidth available.
Before the project, there was some high speed Internet available through in the region, delivered by fiber optic cables that look much like telephone wires; each cable contains about 12 to 24 strands of individual filaments of glass through which, essentially, the Internet is accessed.
The high-speed Internet lines being laid through the Three Ring Binder, on the other hand, have anywhere between 288 to 144 strands of the same Internet-accessing fibers which, at the very least, boosts the county’s broadband capacity sixfold.
Calling it a huge capacity increase is still an understatement.
“One of the things we’ve seen at this point is really an exponential growth rate in the need for bandwidth, so because this is such an expensive project that is partially publicly funded, we’re working hard to make sure that we provision the capacity today that will be needed tomorrow.”
The need for that capacity will not only be driven by residential broadband users, doing things like playing video games and surfing the Worldwide Web; the capacity will be utilized by consumers using 4G wireless — the technology that enables smart phones to use their next generation applications.
“All those things drive a tremendous demand for additional bandwidth and we think that as the demand for bandwidth increases, each fiber facility will be available to meet that demand,” Broder said.
But Broder, Flora, and everyone else involved realize that the significance of the Three Ring Binder project extends far beyond personal computer use.
“This isn’t about watching movies or playing video games,” said Tim McAfee, CEO of Houlton-based Internet service provider Pioneer Broadband. “Customers like Hydroblend were facing costs of up to $16,000 to bring in an Internet connection fast enough for their employees to get online training courses available to other workers around the country,” he explained. “We’ve worked out a temporary fix for them — but they will soon have as much bandwidth as they need at a very reasonable cost because of the availability of fiber through the Three Ring Binder.”
While the project represents a tremendous technological asset to the state, individual telecom companies (like Aroostook Internet and Pioneer Broadband) statewide will need to connect individual homes and business to the vast fiber optic cables by going, as it’s called, “the last mile.”
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
RED TAPE – Congressman Mike Michaud ceremoniously cut the ribbon for the Three Ring Binder project at the Loring Commerce Centre on July 18 and is shown above making a comment to Maine Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner George Gervais about “cutting through the red tape,” following which the room erupted with laughter. Pictured at left is Tilson Fiber Technology President Joshua Broder.
“Pioneer Broadband is building out last mile, high-speed Internet services to people and businesses in at least six full communities that have never had it — and where we probably never would have been able to afford to expand without access to Maine Fiber Company’s middle mile fiber and reasonable costs,” McAfee explained. “If you live in rural America, you know how hard it is to do business if you can’t get a hold of a reasonably priced broadband connection.”
Scheduled to be completed by the end of 2012, the economic impact of the project has already began being felt in the state. Broder explained that there are three concentric layers of economic impact the Three Ring Binder project will have — first and easiest to quantify are the approximately 275 jobs created directly just to build the network.
The next level of economic impact include jobs created by telecom carriers while servicing their customers needs in providing access to the high-speed network.
The third and most difficult aspect of economic impact to quantify is actually the area where Broder and others believe has the most value — jobs created by new businesses attracted to the area by, in part, high speed Internet and existing businesses being able to establish an effective presence in the online business community.
“This is really an economic development project, and it’s all about Maine and Aroostook County being competitive with the rest of the country and the rest of the world,” Broder said. “These kind of projects are happening in Europe and Eastern Asia; for us to remain competitive and relevant in the world economy, we need to have these facilities to compete.”
Maine Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner George Gervais was the last speaker of the ceremony, reiterating the significance of the project.
“Today is a happy day, a day that marks another critical step toward strengthening Maine’s economy; a day that marks the creation of another port of entry for access to what Maine has to offer the world,” he said. “It’s not only the data that will move efficiently between our universities, colleges, health care facilities, government offices and courthouses that makes this announcement so exciting, it’s the critical importance of broadband in today’s economic environment.”
“Aroostook County now has taken two great steps toward bringing all you have to offer to the rest of the world,” Gervais said, setting up his audience for a joke: “This is obviously one of the two steps, the other is increasing the speed on I-95 from Old Town to Houlton.”
The crowd laughed its approval.
