New partnership brings superfast internet to Jasper

Partnership with Smithville Communications and Smithville Telecom will create “Gigacity”

Jasper — Jasper will be joining a handful of cities in the United States with access to gigabit speed internet as Smithville announced it will be installing fiber throughout the city over the next three years.

Engineering on the new system is expected to begin now with work starting in the first quarter of 2015.

“This collaboration between Jasper and a national Top 100 communications provider will propel Jasper residents, schools and companies to an even higher level of success,” said Jasper Mayor, Terry Seitz.  “The decision by the City of Jasper to leverage fiber service to our municipal departments into a complete extension of fiber throughout the community will bring state-of-the-art communications capabilities.  As technology becomes more immersed into our society I believe what we are beginning today will enable us to accomplish things beyond our wildest imagination in the future.”

Jasper is the first Indiana city to be able to offer a full gigabit fiber network featuring high-speed in-home and business wireless gigabit connectivity. The Jasper project represents is a “Fiber-to-the-Premise” (FTTP) installation, with no traditional copper-based or coaxial cable involved, according to Smithville.

“Smithville is pleased and privileged to bring the latest fiber-driven gigabit technology to the people and businesses of Jasper and create a true ‘gigacity’,” said Darby McCarty, Smithville Telecom CEO. “Gigabit connectivity is 1,000 times faster than one megabit, and our new in-home gigabit wireless router connectivity will give Jasper residents the fastest and most versatile Internet presently available in the state of Indiana.”

McCarty and Mayor Seitz noted that the new Smithville gigabit technology that is planned for Jasper will help “future-proof” the community for next-generation technology advancements such as UHD television, seamless high-speed cloud computing, and new gigabit-required complex applications for Big Data and other advancements.

Fiber-optics networking is quickly becoming a necessary element of civic infrastructure. Advancements in healthcare leverage fiber capacity for critical image transmission and telemedicine. Growing businesses can rely on its dependable connectivity and consumers benefit from gigabit-based “smart home” technology, as well as lightning-fast downloads of high-definition movies, streaming video (such as Netflix and Amazon Prime), and a host of other services.

According to Cullen McCarty, President of Smithville Telecom, currently top internet speeds are about 30 mbps. The new service through Smithville will offer customers up to 1000 mbps in download and upload speeds.

Fiber offers a platform of exponential speed and can carry enormous amounts of data. The transition to a purely fiber platform means increasing download speeds from a few megabits per second (Mbps) to 1,000 Mbps.

With this new capacity large files can be downloaded much faster. For example, with gigabit connectivity, a full two-hour HD movie can be downloaded in about 30-50 seconds, compared with much longer periods of time at lower bandwidth speeds.

The fiber build out is expected to take three years to completely install and is estimated to cost over $7 million. Smithville currently expects that about 33% of the gigabit fiber build will be completed by the end of 2016, 33% by the end of 2017 and full completion by the end of 2018.

According to Mayor Seitz, when he took office in 2012, the phone system through the city offices and departments was 18 years old and needed to be updated. The city sent out requests for proposals for the update in 2014.

After receiving responses from seven companies. “Four of them were in a reasonable price range and we felt we could use one of these four vendors for the municipal government service,” Seitz said.

The mayor said he then directed City Attorney Renee Kabrick to amend that original request for proposal to include fiber to the the premise throughout the city. “So, we told these four that if they wanted to provide fiber for us, come back and tell us how you can build out to the entire city,” he said. “Ultimately, we had several different responses from all four; two of which were interested and Smithville was one of those two.”

Smithville asked for an extension on a five-year contract to provide telecom services to the city included in the original response to the request for proposals, and in exchange, they committed to building the network in Jasper with no additional tax dollars invested in the project.

Cullen stated that the city’s willingness to work with the company and the density of residences and businesses made it an attractive city to install the fiber network. “The fact that Jasper does not have a big footprint and it is fairly dense community,” Cullen said in regards to how easy homes will be to connect to the network. “The more houses we can get on one piece of gear the better.”

Later this year, Smithville Telecom will offer the online capacity for Jasper residents to submit their opinion and help influence the sequence of the fiber build-out. More information about the fiber installation and public outreach will be announced throughout the year. Residents can sign up to receive updates at jasper.smithville.com.

In regards to the next step for the company offering fiber to other residents in Dubois County, Cullen acknowledged Jasper was a stepping stone for the company. “This is the first but definitely not the last,” Cullen said.