By now you’ve probably heard the long-awaited news: Alpine Communications is bringing fiber to Osterdock! And we’re just as excited to share the benefits of our advanced fiber network with our community as you are to have all the fast download and upload speeds, generous bandwidth, and reliability of fiber direct to your home.

Over the coming months, you’ll likely see our trucks and teams of dedicated technicians and installers throughout our service area. There’s much work to get done, as delivering the fastest, most reliable internet you can get takes some time and a good amount of effort. Below we briefly explain the main three phases and seven core stages that comprise the process of bringing fiber to our area, including the approximate time frames you can expect each phase to take.

Phase A: Planning and Preparation (approximately 18 weeks)

The first phase of building out fiber begins with our extensive planning and preparation efforts. You may occasionally see surveyors and engineers out in the field carefully studying the installation sites, but much of this work is conducted behind the scenes and out of sight of most customers.

Stage 1: Make ready engineering: During this stage of planning, engineers will design and develop plans and specifications for review and approval for the fiber optic network.

Stage 2: Make ready construction: At this stage in the planning process, the primary focus is on acquiring access to all necessary routes and rights-of-way and finalizing all relevant government permits to ensure the project is cleared to proceed.

Phase B: Construction (approximately 14 weeks)

Next, we move on to the actual construction of the fiber infrastructure. During this intensive phase, you may see us digging holes and installing the equipment and fiber lines. When we’re done, we will return all sidewalks and greenspaces to the way we found them.

Stage 3: Construction: The construction stage is focused on building the network by either burying fiber optic cable in the ground or hanging aerial lines (depending on the design of the network).

Stage 4: Splicing: Splicing is focused on connecting—that is, closing the loops—on the various pieces of fiber used to build the network as a whole. These connections are important to ensure data and information flows at the speed of light.

Phase C: Service Delivery (timing may vary)

After months of planning and constructing the fiber infrastructure, our fiber is just about ready to be delivered to your home! The timing of the following final three steps can vary, so please keep that in mind as you await your personal installation.

Stage 5: Service Drops: During this stage, our teams will place boxes in your neighborhood so that they can place the fiber line that will eventually connect the network to your home (again, depending on the design, it could be buried or aerial lines).

Stage 6: Drops Splice: Once the service drop is complete, the splicing team will ensure there is connectivity between the network and an optical network terminal, which will be placed on the side (typically) of your home.

Stage 7: Installation: After the previous six stages are complete, we will light up the network and our installation team will connect your home to receive service.

Remember that, despite the wait and occasional inconveniences over the coming months, once we’ve completed our work, you’ll have access to the fastest, most reliable internet available today. With Alpine Communications’ fiber, your family can be more productive, enjoy pristine streaming picture quality for TV and movies, distortion-free video calling, riveting online gaming, and all the other online activities that have become a part of your life.

Should you have any questions about our efforts or would like more information about our internet plans and other services, Alpine Communications’ representatives are happy to take your call. And to keep updated on the progress of our fiber infrastructure build-out, follow our social pages!